Though Waco has always punched well above its weight in the national spotlight, in recent years there’s been a growing fear that as the city continued to grow, news coverage was struggling to keep up.
Enter a new enterprise called the Waco Bridge, a not-for-profit news organization launched with support from, and in the spirit of, the highly successful Texas Tribune.
J.B. Smith, editor-in-chief of the Waco Bridge, joined Texas Standard to discuss the new initiative. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us about the Waco Bridge. How did it come to be and why do you think this kind of news coverage is important?
J.B. Smith: The Waco Bridge is, as you said, supported by the Texas Tribune. But the Tribune is giving us its expertise and guidance as we launch this digital non-profit newsroom at Waco. But the decisions are being made locally in terms of editorial content.
And we’re building. We have support of local foundations and we’re building the base of listeners and supporters here in Waco.
How did it come to be? I mean, was it some folks who were longtime journalists here got together, said, “we need this”? What happened?
Actually, civic leaders got together and realized that this is a trend nationwide, that the local news is being hollowed out. And they did the research and hired the American Journalism Project to do a study of the Waco news ecosystem and found that some things were being done well and there were also gaps.
What sort of gaps? Where was the reporting lagging, as you all saw?
Well, the reports show that there was a lot that was being done well, but a lot was being left out. And what the community told us in follow-up conversations is that people want not just more information, but they want to know how information affects them.
So we are focusing on schools, education. We’re focusing on this community, making sure that diversity of community is reflected in our coverage.
And also local government. But not just the institutions of local government, but all the things that local government touches: Water, infrastructure, economic development, downtown development, housing.
How do you make this work, though, when we’ve seen newspapers folding all across the state?
This is gonna take a lot of support from the community. And we’re doing that first.
We’re working on building the audience. We’re not just gonna launch this and hope people will find their way to it. And so part of that is, we’re getting out in the community and doing events and we’re pushing this out on social media and we’re trying to get this out to people where they are.
Didn’t you have an event recently, something like “Texas Decisions, Waco Impact”? What was that about?
Yes, that was an event we had last week. It drew a great crowd, maybe 160 or more, to McLennan Community College, which hosted us.
We had our local state representative, Pat Curry, along with our superintendent, mayor, and county judge. And we talked about what just happened in the Legislature and how it affected Waco.
Very interesting. So from that event, what did you hear? What do you do with it? How do you sort of build on that journalistically?
Right. Well, I think it was, as proof of concept, it was very successful. And what we heard immediately afterwards was people saying, “how often are you going to do this? We’ll be there for every time.”
We’ve been traveling around the state for our 10th year, and we’ve been speaking with a lot of Texans. As we’ve speaking with lot of Texas, one common theme that keeps coming up is water – you know: water quality, availability, infrastructure.
I would imagine this is not lost on folks in Waco, right?
That’s right. We have issues. Historically, we’ve had issues with water quality because there are a lot of dairies upstream of us. And so that’s been a long saga.
But also in this legislative session, there was a new creation of a new water authority, the Central Texas Water Alliance, between Bell County – which is where Temple and Fort Hood and Killeen are – and our county, McLennan County. And the county judge, as he said last week at our meeting, they’re looking at building a pipeline to East Texas to bring groundwater to our area.
I have to ask about the name, “Waco Bridge.” Tell us more.
It’s funny, when I was thinking about this and interviewing for this job, before they announced it even, I thought, “you know, a good name for this would be ‘the Waco Bridge,’ because we have the historic suspension bridge built in 1870.
And then also what this is meant to do is to bring people together and also to bring, you now, hopefully even news media together. Like we are partnering with KWBU on a show every week and we’re trying to bridge people’s information needs.
Well, how can people find the Waco Bridge?
They can subscribe to our newsletter, which they can find at wacobridge.org. The full news site in its final form will launch next week.
