The Texas Tribune is a new nonpartisan, nonprofit media startup whose mission is to promote civic engagement and discourse on government, politics, public policy and other matters of statewide interest. The core product of the Texas Tribune will be its destination web site, www.texastribune.org. The site will blend text reporting with the newest presentation and visualization tools; audio and video; original source documents; highly curated news aggregation from other sources; and proprietary, searchable databases. Texas Tribune will produce events and specialized publications, and plans to syndicate content to other online, print and broadcast news outlets.

In addition, Texas Tribune will document best practices – both on the editorial and business side -- and share them with the larger news community, including other Knight grantees, through the new Investigative Reporting Network. Texas Tribune will help fill the new void in the amount of quality statewide news coverage in Texas, the nation’s second most populous state. They expect to reach its growth targets and become a sustainable model for other statewide news sites to follow.

The Texas project will collaborate with other Knight projects in California, New York, and Washington, D.C., forming a core of nonprofit reporting projects in the nation’s capital and its three largest states as part of Knight Foundation’s Investigative Reporting Initiative. Ultimately, we hope Texas Tribune will raise the civic awareness of the average Texan and serve as a source of innovation for the journalism community.