T-Squared: Three reporters join The Texas Tribune’s newsroom

We are happy to announce three thrilling new hires to our reporting workforce.

Roxanna Asgarian can be our new legislation and courts reporter, monitoring how the authorized system shapes the lives of Texans and the politics of this state. Roxanna is an unbiased journalist who till lately was primarily based in Houston and has printed items in New York Magazine, The Washington Post, Texas Monthly, Time and different periodicals. Her first guide, “We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America,” about six kids adopted from Texas who died with their mother and father in a California murder-suicide, can be printed by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in March. The guide delves deeply into the kid welfare system in Texas. Roxanna impressed us with the standard of her writing and her analytical strategy to protecting the legislation; judges, lawmakers and attorneys; and the bizarre Texans caught up in authorized choices. A local of Las Vegas and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, Roxanna loves gardening and hanging out along with her husband and 5-year-old youngster. They lately moved to Dallas, the place Roxanna can be primarily based, reporting to senior editor David Pasztor.

Robert Downen can be our new democracy reporter, specializing in disinformation, extremism and threats to democracy together with the cash and actions that gasoline political activism on this state. Robert joins us from the Houston Chronicle, the place he covers nonprofits and different enterprise news. He was the lead reporter on “Abuse of Faith,” a sequence that detailed a whole lot of instances of sexual abuse throughout the Southern Baptist Convention. The sequence, which Robert found and pitched whereas he was a Hearst Fellow and protecting Houston City Hall, was named the largest international faith story of 2019 by the Religion News Association. Its findings proceed to dominate the agenda of the nation’s second-largest religion group and are on the core of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Robert beforehand was a enterprise reporter on the Albany Times Union and managing editor of a small newspaper group in his hometown in Illinois. He grew up within the Chicago space and in his free time enjoys enjoying and producing music and hanging out along with his two canines. He’ll be primarily based in Austin as a member of the politics workforce led by Rebekah Allen.

Alejandra Martinez can be our new setting reporter. She joins us from KERA in Dallas, the place she started as a Report for America fellow after which lined Dallas City Hall. Previously, she labored at WLRN, South Florida’s public radio station, as an affiliate producer. Following her relentless protection of a shingle mountain — a dumped pile of roofing waste that induced brown mud and fiberglass to blow into the communities of shade close by — town of Dallas started discussions about eradicating the fabric. When she realized a few Superfund web site in Grand Prairie, she knocked on the doorways of dozens of Spanish-speaking households to tell them of the hazard. After her story aired, the Environmental Protection Agency hosted its first group occasion within the space since 2018 and introduced plans for cleanup. A local of the Aldine space of Harris County, Alejandra attended the University of Texas at Austin. She spends her spare time along with her cat, Dakota, binge watching tv dramas and studying romance novels, for which she has a devoted Instagram account. She’ll be primarily based in Dallas, reporting to Dave Harmon, editor for setting, vitality and immigration, and partnering with Erin Douglas, who’s specializing in local weather change.

These journalists can be pivotal to the Tribune’s evolution over the following few years. We couldn’t be extra enthusiastic about these new hires, all of whom begin on the finish of the month.

Disclosure: Texas Monthly and University of Texas at Austin have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that’s funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no function within the Tribune’s journalism. Find a whole list of them here.