Journalism is having a positive impact on the people of North Texas

Stephanie Quintero wondered how she and her family would pay for food as a student at Dallas College after her father lost his job during the pandemic. A food pantry at the school became their primary source of nutrition for weeks. After Dallas Morning News reporter Marcela Rodrigues wrote this year about the heartbreaking reality that many college students struggle with food insecurity, at least one reader told us she dropped off groceries at the school’s Mountain View campus.

The inhumane conditions of children inside Dallas’ Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center came to light this year also as part of our work. In one of several stories about the facility, parents of nine children inside the center told reporter Josephine Peterson that their kids were locked up for hours each day and not allowed outside for weeks, even months, at a time. The children were also denied medical care and adequate amounts of food. Our reporting led the state to open an investigation into the center.

Unanswered complaints from residents who lived in homes near a plant in southwest Dallas also caught our attention. After reporter Maria Ramos Pacheco’s began asking questions, the city shut down the smelly biofuel facility that rendered animal fat for operating without proper zoning.

These stories, and many others, are representative of our purpose and mission at The Dallas Morning News. We want our journalism to lead to a better North Texas. We want our journalism to make an impact across generations. We want you to see our journalism as indispensable.

To do this, we investigate wrongs and spotlight the unique, the remarkable and the generous. We scrutinize promises and commitments by elected officials. We track government spending and business practices. We do this because we know we are only successful if the work we do makes a difference.

As we close out the final days of 2023, it’s important to me that we hold ourselves accountable to you and examine the impact of our work throughout the year. This is how we can determine whether we are fulfilling our mission.

Did new policies or laws get enacted or changed because of our reporting?

Did new investigations get launched that could lead to substantial changes?

Did the programs or people we spotlighted see significant benefit or different outcomes after our reporting?

New policies and investigations

From detention centers to schools, from our city leaders to our courts and police agencies, the DMN scrutinized statements, decisions and policies across multiple government agencies who work to serve us.

Reporter Kelli Smith learned that Dynell Lane, a disabled military vet in our community, had been denied access to a restaurant restroom and was laughed at by Dallas police officers. Lane had filed a complaint, but the department declined to pursue an investigation saying officers did not violate any policies. After our story was published, police spokeswoman Kristin Lowman told us that “the department is looking into the complaint,” and readers from all over the world showered Lane with support.

Seventy-eight-year-old Dora Overton was the focus of a couple stories by Watchdog columnist Dave Lieber. Overton had lived in her Forest Hill home for 45 years, staying there after her husband passed away almost 15 years ago. She never wanted to leave. But three years ago, TxDOT informed her that she needed to relocate because they needed her home and property for the widening of Interstate 20. Overton was devastated and so was a local lawyer who took on her case for free. Among their concerns was that TxDOT’s relocation package did not provide enough money for Overton to relocate or purchase another home — especially at her age.

The same day our story published, TxDOT agreed to give Overton a three-month extension.

This summer, breaking news reporter Zaeem Shaikh wrote about inhumane prison conditions inside of facilities run by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Through his reporting, the family of a man who died in prison learned more about his death than the agency had previously agreed to share with them, family members told Shaikh. After our story, Congressional House Democrat staff informed Shaikh that his reporting helped them draft this letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer urging Committee Republicans to join Democrats in a bipartisan investigation into jail and prison conditions nationwide.

The family of Kenneth Knotts would likely not have learned so quickly how their loved one had died if reporter Smith hadn’t been curious enough to ask questions about his death. Knotts, 41, died in a Dallas hospital while in police custody. The circumstances caught Smith’s attention. And because of her reporting, his mother told us that it was the first time she learned that her son’s death had been ruled a homicide. His mother also told Smith that after our story published, police officials apologized for not informing her about the circumstances surrounding her son’s death. The family has now retained a lawyer and filed a lawsuit to find out more details about Knotts’ death.

Smith’s reporting was also key in uncovering the fact that the police department has lost evidence in a number of criminal cases in recent years, some that had already gone to court. Smith, along with several other reporters, explored the implications of the lost evidence. The Dallas Police Department is now implementing new measures to review evidence and changing how it stores digital files so evidence is retained for two years, instead of just 90 days, which was the standard timeframe previously.

The Dallas County DA ordered an audit after he read our coverage and it uncovered that evidence has been deleted in some murder cases. Local attorneys have also filed motions for new trials based on the revelations in our stories.

In early October, reporter Sue Ambrose published a story stating the CEO of Dallas area Habitat For Humanity was on leave during an internal review about his wife serving as the Realtor for a land buy for the charity. Ambrose analyzed the CEO’s complicated financial history. On Oct. 26, she detailed the bankruptcy that had him still owing more than $2 million in state and federal taxes, according to public records, and over $1 million to companies he did business with. On Oct. 30, the charity parted ways with CEO William Eubanks III.

The News also explored this year a significant and little-known health care crisis. Every year, more people die in car crashes, falls, gunshot wounds and other trauma-related accidents by the time they are 45 years old than any other disease or incident including cancer. Dozens of medical journals and reports and health care officials have reported that for decades, health officials have begged the federal government to do more to prevent these deaths. Yet so far, no major entity has prioritized this issue except for the military and a few places across the country, including a couple of agencies here in Texas.

The same can be said about reporting our newsroom did this year in regards to our furry friends. Newsroom columnist Sharon Grigsby wrote a number of stories about animal care concerns at SPCA. Grigsby’s work led the organization’s leaders to replace the agency’s top official and a major donor of SPCA withdrew their support for the agency. She recently followed up her examination by spending time with the new head of the entity to hear about his vision for the future. I’m sure I’m in good company when I say that we all hope the agency can overcome past concerns for our well-loved animals.

The Education Lab, our team of journalists who cover this single issue, turned their attention to the state’s challenges with hiring high-quality teachers. Their coverage led Jacob Kirksey and other researchers from Texas Tech University to study and recently release a report on virtual teacher preparation in which they outlined a number of recommendations for the state. Kirksey wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he was inspired to embark on the research after our reporting on questionable alternative certification programs. Stories on the explosion of uncertified teachers in Texas and the need for better prep programs also led state lawmakers to propose incentives for teacher residency programs and measures to bolster the number of certified educators, among other tools.

One of the team’s most read stories this year also had a significant impact on one of our local school districts. Reporter Talia Richman got a tip that led to a story about a teen girl who was punished after she discussed her concerns about a potential school shooting with classmates. Our reporting prompted an investigation on discipline inequities in Lewisville ISD. Later, the school district implemented changes to ensure more fair and consistent punishment for students. The story spurred discussions nationally on school safety and how student discipline and race intersect. Richman recently discussed the story on the popular radio program This American Life.

One of the most significant projects we took on this year was the result of Grigsby’s reporting inside a local school. A story in February she wrote revealed the deaths of three Carrollton-Farmers Branch students and hospitalizations of six others from fentanyl overdoses. Around the same time, Education Lab reporter Valeria Olivares highlighted how little information was available to Hispanic families about the drug. Soon after, several area school districts launched fentanyl prevention efforts to specifically serve Spanish-speaking communities.

These stories on fentanyl led us to pursue a 30-day project this fall that took us inside a hospital, a police unit dedicated to drug enforcement and the homes of many brave and grief-stricken families.

Our entire goal for this project was to save lives and to educate you about the powerful and deadly nature of fentanyl, the most potent drug ever created. So many of you wrote to tell us that you were talking to your kids and grandkids and sharing the stories with neighbors and friends. Some of you also attended our recent community discussion about the dangers of fentanyl, eager to share more about your families’ experiences with the drug. In addition, our reporting has already led to significant changes.

In a rare and unusual move, the The Food and Drug Administration sped through approval of the first over-the-counter rapid fentanyl test for use in all settings after Grigsby and reporter Claire Ballor started asking questions about the myriad gaps in testing for the deadly drug.

The DMN also partnered with Dallas County to distribute 100,000 copies of information from our “Deadly Fake” series to seventh- and eighth-grade students. We have high hopes that this work will find its way to more of your homes, to more young people and to more politicians so that more money is devoted and programs are developed to battle this drug.

Significant benefit to people or programs

As I mentioned earlier, one of our criteria to determine if our work had an impact is whether the programs or people we spotlight see significant benefit or different outcomes after our reporting.

In addition to our “Deadly Fake” series, the next stories certainly highlight this goal.

After the tragic mass shooting at Allen Premium Outlets, reporter Imelda Garcia learned that Elio Cumana-Rivas’ ashes had not been delivered to his family in Venezuela two months after he was shot and killed. Instead, his cremated remains, her story said, had been riding in his 2000 Toyota Corolla, “under the watchful eye of his brother as he drives to and from work.”

Cumana-Rivas had only lived in the United States for about eight months and was seeking asylum when he was shot seven times on May 6. Getting his remains back to Venezuela had become too costly and complicated for his family due to strained diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela.

After our story, Victims First, a national organization, helped pay for Cumana-Rivas’ ashes to finally return to his family in Venezuela.

Reporter Sarah Blaskovich wrote a moving piece about Restaurateur Dean Fearing’s son, who was in need of a blood-stem cell donor. After the story published, many of you showed up at an event to support the family and they found a donor.

There was also the generosity of readers who stepped in to help neighbors in need. Reporter Myah Taylor wrote a story in August about seniors struggling to avoid homelessness. One of the disabled seniors she featured in her story was having trouble making ends meet with the rising cost of rent and groceries. After our story was published, a woman called Taylor the next day and offered to pay his rent for three months. The man was incredibly grateful, he later told Taylor.

Reporter Haeven Gibbons wrote a story about Jason Hernandez, whose prison sentence on drug charges had been commuted. He is now turning the very convenience store where he made his first drug sale into a nonprofit grocery store and resource center for kids in McKinney. He calls it, “La Tiendita,” or The Little Store. After our story, someone made a $35,000 donation for this community work.

Stories like this one remind me as 2023 comes to an end, just how special North Texas is. It’s big, and it’s growing, and it’s filled with Fortune 500 companies and big health care systems and first-class higher education institutions. These are all important and necessary to any thriving community.

But what makes our region unique are people like you. You care and you are kind and generous with your money and your time.

We plan to keep sharing this impact report with you annually. And we hope these stories inspire you, as they do us, to take even more pride in North Texas.

Thank you for your support and to every parent, government or elected official, teacher, business owner, student, civic activist, historian, or North Texas resident who shared their stories and perspective and responded to our information requests so that we were able to publish impactful journalism this year.

My wish for 2024 is that the list of examples illustrating how our journalism has impacted you is even more expansive.

Happy holidays!