What are state and local governments in Texas doing to make raw data available to the public? Not much.
Matt Stiles
Matt Stiles covered government and politics for the Tribune, with a focus on data journalism, from 2009 to 2011. He oversaw and developed the Tribune’s library of web applications and interactive graphics. Previously, he was a government reporter at the Houston Chronicle. While there, he won the newspaper’s Jesse Award for service journalism and beat reporting and was its reporter of the year in 2007. Before joining the Chronicle, Stiles worked as a reporter for nearly four years at The Dallas Morning News.
TribBlog: Whitmire Wants “Top-to-Bottom” Changes at TDCJ
“If the prison administrators cannot get the job done, we need to find some who can.”
On the Records: The Lobby Latest
How many people could you feed with $2.7 million?
Debtors’ Treadmill: Treasure Map
Short-term, high-interest lenders are clustered in neighborhoods where the median household income is less than $50,000 a year.
On the Records: Adventures in Public Information
Most agencies release their data with little hassle. Not the Dallas Area Rapid Transit agency.
TribBlog: A Bolly-“Good Business Decision”
Dan Patrick is changing the programming at his Dallas station exclusively to Indian music.
On the Records: Hutchison vs. White Money
With some notable exceptions, few political donors cut checks to both candidates.
On the Records: Shami vs. Himself
Farouk Shami donated $4,800 to Bill White’s senate campaign. Now the money could be used against him in the govenor’s race.
2010: The Texas Tribune Index
The number-crunchers among the Republicans and the Democrats in Texas use election results to get a feel for the political environment in each legislative district. They start with statewide races and then bake in some assumptions about what might happen if they put the right candidates in place. We and other political watchers need the same thing, without the partisan ingredients. So we cooked up the Texas Tribune Index.
On the Records: Mack Brown vs. Mike Sherman
We’ve added Texas A&M to our payroll database, so now you can compare both coaches’ salaries. Let’s hope next week’s game isn’t so lopsided.


