FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 19, 2022

DALLAS/FORT WORTH – KERA News and the Fort Worth Report are excited to announce a collaboration to better serve diverse North Texas communities with local news and arts and culture journalism.  The two organizations will work together to cover the most critical stories affecting Fort Worth and Tarrant County.

“Our collaboration with KERA helps the Fort Worth Report share the story of the nation’s second-fastest-growing city with all of North Texas, the rest of the state and nation,” says Chris Cobler, the Report’s CEO and publisher. “Public media also serves as a good model for the financial sustainability our nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization is working to achieve.”

Through the collaboration, KERA and the Fort Worth Report will share their reporting across both organizations’ digital and on-air platforms. Fort Worth Report journalists will be heard regularly on KERA News 90.1, while KERA reporters will receive bylines on stories on fortworthreport.org. Audiences can also look forward to the two organizations co-hosting events, conversations and more. Working together in this way will eliminate redundancies in their reporting, and ultimately widen North Texans’ access to local news that affects their lives.

“The KERA and Fort Worth Report newsrooms already have been collaborating and sharing coverage of the Dallas-Fort Worth area,” says Gilbert Bailon, Executive Editor of KERA News and former reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Now, our newsrooms will be expanding our coordinated coverage in Fort Worth and Tarrant County to provide more quality local news across our digital and broadcast platforms.”

The Fort Worth Report and KERA remain separate, independent nonprofit news organizations.

To help coordinate this coverage, KERA has hired Juan Antonio Ramos as collaborations editor. Ramos is a veteran journalist and editor who spent 24 years at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and La Estrella. As collaborations editor, he will work closely with leadership and journalists at both newsrooms, making sure the most important stories are covered in a timely and comprehensive way on digital and broadcast platforms. In addition, KERA funded a government accountability reporting position at the Report. The reporter will work closely with KERA’s government accountability team.

“Both KERA and the Fort Worth Report believe in the power of local journalism in creating a more equitable and just society,” says Nico Leone, president and CEO of KERA. “Our partnership is in service to the communities that make up North Texas and each individual who calls this region home.”

As nonprofit journalism organizations, KERA and the Fort Worth Report are united in their goal of putting audiences first and ensuring everyone in our community has access to free, fact-based news and information. The two organizations look forward to growing and deepening their relationship and serving the people of North Texas.

For more information about KERA and the Fort Worth Report’s collaboration, contact Lauren Menking, KERA communications manager, at lmenking@kera.org, and Trish Rodriguez Terrell, the Report’s chief development officer, at trish.terrell@fortworthreport.org.