“Sixty to seventy percent of my job is listening,” explains Matthew Sgroi. An education reporter for the Fort Worth Report (FWR), Sgroi and Jacob Sanchez, the digital site’s education editor, provide daily and in-depth stories about the challenges facing parents, teachers, and administrators across Fort Worth’s 12 independent school districts.
In 2025 alone, their nonprofit news organization published more than 400 stories about education in Fort Worth and surrounding Tarrant County. The pair attended school board meetings; spoke with administrators, educators, and parents; and combed through reams of data. In other words, listening and digging, two of journalism’s most important tools.
Their focus particularly has been on the Fort Worth Independent School District along with the Lake Worth Independent School District. The Texas Education Agency announced in late 2025 that, following state law, the agency was taking over those two districts because of the consistent failure of some individual campuses.
Beyond those failing campuses, though, the city faces troubling illiteracy rates. Only 46 percent of students across all 12 Fort Worth districts read at grade level, according to state data for the 2024-2025 academic year. (FWISD students did show some improvement in reading and math on a recent mid-year national exam that numerous districts use to measure student progress.)
Sanchez and Sgroi consistently report on the realities at play in Fort Worth schools. In doing so, they brought reading deficits to residents’ attention. “Their focus on student outcomes is too rare in K-12 reporting in Texas, if not unique,” says Pete Geren, president and CEO of the Sid Richardson Foundation. The philanthropy is as a catalyst for addressing the city’s literacy gaps, including launching the Fort Worth Educational Partnership.
The Sid Richardson Foundation also invests in the Fort Worth Report, along with such other local philanthropies as the Amon G. Carter Foundation and the Rainwater Charitable Foundation. So does the American Journalism Project (AJP), which backs nonprofit digital news operations around the country. AJP is supporting five FWR positions.
FWR’s reporting on the city’s educational shortcomings goes back to 2021 and the COVID pandemic. Chris Cobler, the site’s founding editor, says that both research and civic leaders made it clear that K-12 education needed to be central in the site’s coverage as it launched that year.
“What we needed, they found, was everything about civic life. We needed to figure out what matters to our civic life.”
Chris Cobler, the Fort Worth Report’s founding publisher and CEO
Sanchez, who has won awards from the Texas Managing Editors Association for his coverage of local government, politics, and education, was one of the first three hires. The St. Edwards University graduate immediately started the education beat.
Through his listening and digging into state test outcome data, Sanchez realized Fort Worth students were not doing well in math and reading. But not just because of the pandemic, although COVID’s unprecedented school closings impacted learning. Other factors were in play as well, including FWISD’s leadership.
Sanchez examined student outcome that showed consistent underperformance on state achievement exams. “That reporting was key,” Sanchez said as we talked one January morning in FWR’s offices. “Trustees started paying attention. And people wanted to know how their children were doing.”
The trustees removed the superintendent, although his successor lasted only two years. Meanwhile, Sanchez and Sgrio kept reporting.
In January 2026 alone, the site published more than 40 articles on education. Not all were deep dives into academics. Some championed happenings at local colleges or special moments like a teacher of the week award. But their reporting, along with that of FWR’s Chris Moss from Arlington in Tarrant County, did keep FWR’s 100,000 subscribers informed about the ongoing drama in Lake Worth ISD and the reason behind potential school closures in Fort Worth ISD and Arlington ISD.
Sanchez and Sgrio explain they attend school board meetings for many of the 12 school districts that serve the city of Ft. Worth. They say board members regularly thank them for showing up. In some cases, they are one of the few people in attendance. The pair report that current FWISD Superintendent Karen Molinar likes that they always attend meetings.
On January 26, Sanchez published a story that detailed how Fort Worth ISD trustees had decided to spend $76 million. The data was presented in a discernible chart, showing readers how bond projects and network security were the priorities.
Sanchez and Sgrio also cover charter schools, such as the International Leadership Texas, IDEA, and Uplift Education charter school networks. The reporters use state data to compare the achievement levels of charter students to those in Fort Worth ISD schools.
“Documenters” fill in the gap with those school boards that neither Sanchez nor Sgrio can follow. Documenters are citizens, some of whom are retired, that FWR trains in taking notes and collecting information at hearings. In other words, they document what happens and report it back to FWR editors. “Documenters are brand ambassadors,” Cobler says with a smile.
FWR’s work on literacy is what particularly stands out. A February 1st in-depth report by Sgroi detailed how Bookworms, an offshoot of Literacy United, runs free after-school reading programs at five Fort Worth ISD elementary schools. As Geren noted in an email, the piece “tells the human-interest side of the story well AND educates the public about literacy education and the science of reading.”
Sgroi, a TCU graduate, reported how individual students were working on phonics and reading comprehension. Some also talked about their newfound interest in reading. At the same time, the piece provided the public such granular detail as:
“Students averaged a 13.68-point increase from the beginning to the end of the year on one national progress exam FWISD uses. The children also showed improvement across all skill areas on a phonics screener, with particularly strong growth in decoding patterns such as consonant-vowel-consonant words and silent-e words.”
FWR takes education reporting like that directly to parents through a weekly newsletter. And the nonprofit holds regular community conversations that include public forums on dyslexia and literacy.
“They provide persistent reporting on public education,” Geren says. “It’s not episodic. It matters that their reporters know so much about education, so they are not manipulated.”
The cumulative impact of this work, FWR’s assistant managing editor Eva-Marie Ayala says, is to bring attention to schools and achievement deficits that had long existed but lacked public awareness. She would know. The veteran education journalist grew up attending some of those schools.
What’s happening in this reporting reflects the emphasis of the Solutions Journalism Movement. Journalists are not only exposing problems, but they help communities identify solutions.
Cobler calls this just old-fashioned journalism. However you define it, Fort Worth citizens are better off. That’s particularly true for students in the 12 school districts stretching across America’s 11th-largest city. The Fort Worth Report’s focus on student outcomes keeps citizens informed. The reporting also makes it possible for the community to address its reading challenges, which need resolving for the city as a whole to move forward.
Q&A WITH CHRIS COBLER ON FORT WORTH REPORT’S ORIGIN STORY AND FUTURE GOALS
Chris Cobler, the Fort Worth Report’s founding publisher and CEO, explains in this exchange the origins of the digital site, its mission, and its future.
The Fort Worth Report started in 2021, and you have been there since the outset. How did you all determine which topics to cover since you were not a general-interest daily publication?
Before I was hired in 2021 as the founding publisher and CEO, there was a “coalition of the concerned,” as Wes Turner, former publisher of the Fort Worth Star Telegram put it. A coalition of business and civic leaders had come together because they feared they were going to wake up one day and not have any trusted local news. The community would be a lot worse off for that.
As I look across the country at how local nonprofit news organizations have started, they typically begin with a popular laid-off editor or publisher who rallies the community to start a site or alternative. Our case is the opposite. This was a community feeling so intensely about the dramatic decline of the Star Telegram that they said, “What do we do about it?” For the most part, they had no publishing background, except for Turner.
The group, which included our now-president Bill Meadows, learned about nonprofit news and looked at examples like the San Antonio Report. They hired the News Revenue Hub to do market research, focus groups, and listen to the community.
The civic and business leaders were all in the community, so they were listening to themselves as well about what Fort Worth needed in local journalism. It wasn’t an opinion section. It wasn’t breaking crime news or ambulance chasing. It wasn’t sports because there was a lot of that. And it wasn’t clickbait headlines because there was plenty of that, too.
What we needed, they found, was everything about civic life. We needed to figure out what matters to our civic life.
Focus groups immediately showed that economic development, education, and leadership came up as leading topics to cover. As they thought about this approach, they hired me. My whole career has been in community journalism. That is all I have known.
So, I continued their conversation and had many more. We still hear that civic life and civic engagement are what matters to people. Our business model is based upon them.
We started with a small staff of six in a shared workspace and focused our reporting on general government accountability, education, and businesses and nonprofits. We have stayed true to those topics as we have grown to a staff of 25. We have more reporters in these areas, but those are still our lanes.
Your five-year plan calls for the Fort Worth Report growing from 2,800 members today to 10,000 members by 2030. And from 100,000 subscribers to 250,000 subscribers. How do you plan to accomplish that? And what is a member versus a subscriber?
The member/subscriber distinction is key. Core to our mission is that we believe trusted local news and information should be free to everybody. You can be a subscriber without paying a dime. That just means you have signed up for our newsletters and communications and that you are engaged at a higher level than finding us through a Google search or even simply coming to our website. You are doing things that help us serve you better.
Then, there are members. We didn’t have a membership person in our first couple of years. Now, we are hiring our second membership person so we can serve our audience better and become more engaged with the audience so that people want to become members.
A member is anyone that gives to us at any level. We want to get 10,000 members. If the average annual gift is $200, that is $2 million a year in unrestricted revenue to do our job. That would create a stable base and allow us to grow solidly. Revenues wouldn’t go up or down based upon whether a major donor or foundation loves us or not. That kind of base would be evidence of how strong our work is and our relationship with our audience.
How do you plan to accomplish that?
We start by having a couple of people working on meeting the goals. That is the whole philosophy of the American Journalism Project (AJP). Their strategy is to invest in the backbone of the revenue development and business operation. Then, we can focus on things like the long-term plan and community journalism.
AJP has given us a three-year, $1.5 million grant to hire a membership director and a development director. That sets the stage for us to be successful with our Vision 2030 plan, which we put together independently of AJP. They believed so much in the plan that they invested in us.
How do events factor into your long-term strategy and how do you determine the subjects for those events?
Events are huge. They are all about engagement, and membership is all about engagement. I’ve been surprised how popular our events have become. People want to be connected. And our mission is to connect our community through trusted local news and information. Events do that. They serve our mission and bring in revenue.
People who want to connect with our audience will sponsor events, too. We just had a spectacular “52 Faces of Community” event that JPS [John Peter Smith Hospital] and HEB-Central Market sponsored. Whatever tough day I am having, I look at that event and think this is our mission and our community. I looked around that room and thought, “Here we are, connecting our community through trusted local news and information.”
Capacity is the only limiting factor for events. They take time and staff. So, with AJP’s support, we will have two people working on events. Our events business, with sponsorships, could grow into revenue of $1 million annually. That could be huge, along with $2 million annually in membership revenues.
Foundation support will remain significant. But foundations and major donors want to hear how you are diversifying your revenue.
You have secured funding locally and are civically oriented. How do you maintain your independent voice?
I get asked that question a lot. To me, it is much simpler than under the for-profit business model. You can be independent in the newspaper world through being fabulously wealthy, and many used to be. But even then, their publishers would have to respond when a large advertiser got mad about something. There was a wall between church and state, where the business side of a newspaper was separate from its editorial team. But when I was a publisher in South Texas, I constantly had conversations about something we wrote.
Under the nonprofit model, the community owns you and you get support from a broad range of people who know you are an independent news voice. It is much easier as an editor, publisher and CEO.
The Richardson Foundation, for example, gives us money to do education reporting. They are not asking for anything other than to do good education reporting. That is what our mission is anyway. It is not out of alignment with our mission.
We are totally transparent about our funders, and we are accountable to our community. And we are sticking to the values of community journalism. We need to think thoughtfully and openly with our community about what we are doing and why we are doing it. Chances are, we are going to see our readers in the grocery store or church. We aren’t doing our jobs as journalists if we can’t talk to them about that.
