Dallas Media Collaborative seeks solutions, explanations

By Joanna Cattanach
Program Coordinator
Dallas Media Collaborative

Understanding categories and definitions regarding affordable housing can be difficult.

That’s why the Dallas Media Collaborative, a coalition of several local news media outlets guided by the Solutions Journalism Network, is providing original reporting on the topic and published a guide to help residents tap into resources and information that can help them find the appropriate program for them.

As a collaborative, we’ve worked together to create a comprehensive glossary of terms, stories, perspectives and research. The goal is to help the public —and voters— to be better informed and be ready to vote on the fate of the housing bond.

Dallas Documenters

We’ve also partnered with Dallas Documenters, a nonprofit organization that trains individuals to take notes at public meetings and makes those notes available for everyone, to help inform residents who don’t have time to attend meetings breaking down barriers in the process.  

In 2023, Dallas Documenters:

• Held 4 training sessions for Documenters
• Trained 63 Dallas Documenters
• Covered 52 public meetings
• Spent 168 hours attending meetings

Voters should be asking hard questions now including what communities the bond funds will support and how will the funding really address “affordable housing” in Dallas.

Finally, we know the media does have a role in not only giving the status of the situation, but also helping to find solutions. The answers aren’t always what we want to hear, to be sure. But the Dallas Media Collaborative has worked to corral information and find solutions where possible. 

Our members have made the effort, through support of the Solutions Journalism national network and our fiscal sponsor the Communities Foundation of Texas, to look for answers by working together and sharing resources. So have collaboratives from Philadelphia to Charlotte to Kansas City and more. 

We need collaboratives to make better use of our shared resources, fill local news gaps to make information more easily accessible for the community to be more civically engaged. 

Courtesy of the Dallas Media Collaborative, a collaborative reporting project focused on solutions to the affordable housing crisis in Dallas. Dallas Documents is part of the Dallas Media Collaborative, launched by the Solutions Journalism Network with funding from the Knight Foundation. Find out more at dallasmediacollab.com.