Postcards and laundromat visits: The Texas Tribune audience team experiments with IRL distribution

In what The Texas Tribune is calling a “first” for its newsroom, the outlet experimented with in-person outreach for its reporting on air quality monitoring and petrochemical plants. Locals interviewed for the story told the Tribune about health symptoms and other causes for concern. (One described the air as having a “poison-like smell.”) The Tribune followed up on monitoring being done by the state and laid out what steps locals can take to protect themselves. The project came out of the Altavoz Lab Environmental Fellowship and also received funding from the Pulitzer Center. It was co-published in March by the Tribune, Environmental Health News, and palabra in both English and Spanish.

To reach affected audiences, the Tribune printed 500 flyers and 1,000 postcards in English and Spanish. Journalists knocked on doors in the neighborhoods where they’d reported and made additional stops in school pick-up lines, churches, grocery stores, laundromats and other spots where residents gather.

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