The Courier Way
Texas Politics
Best Practices
State History
Journalistically speaking
100

How many states have a Courier newsroom?

20

100

True or false, Texas is a red state.

False, Texas is a non-voting state. Research shows that the state has more registered Democrats than Republicans, but Republicans have better voter turnout.

100

This platform houses our most reliable audience

Email

100

This single word serves as the Texas state motto

Friendship

100

Courier's use of this punctuation is not AP Style

Oxford comma

200

This newsroom was Courier's first

Dogwood

200

This US Senate hopeful launched an organization to help increase Texas voter turnout 

Beto O'Rourke

200

What types of photos do better on social media?

-Photos that include people

-Photos we've taken (not stock images)

200

Texas is soon to surpass this state to have the most data centers in the country

Virginia - the birthplace of data centers

200

Name one of the core news values that determine if a topic is worth covering


  • Impact: How many people are affected and how seriously.
  • Proximity: How close the event is to the audience geographically or emotionally.
  • Timeliness: How recent or fresh the information is.
  • Conflict: Disagreements, arguments, or struggles between opposing sides.
  • Prominence: The involvement of well-known people, groups, or institutions.
  • Oddity / Bizarre: Unusual, quirky, or unexpected occurrences.


300

These five departments that make up Courier's local network

Political, newsletter, social, organizing, underwriting

300

The last Texas Democratic governor  

Ann Richards, left office in 1995

300

Social captions work best with this

A call to action (CTA)

300

She was the first female governor of Texas

Miriam A. Ferguson 

1925-1927, 1933-1935

300

All good journalists have this attribute—and it can't be taught

Curiosity 

400

One of the reason's Tara founded Courier

-combat conservative misinformation

-to fill local news deserts in swing states

-to increase civic engagement

400

A Texas Democrat that doesn't take AIPAC money

Talarico, Casar, Padilla, Menefee

400

We don't prioritize this popular social platform  because we don't believe our audience is there

X

400

Where do the coyotes wail in the Deep in the Heart of Texas song

Along the trail

400

"Be Accountable and Transparent" is a tenant of what list of principles

The SPJ Code of Ethics

500

It's how we can operate with no paid subscriptions, but still have autonomy over our work

Our partnership model encourages donations/investment from state and national organizations with similar values. They already know we agree with them on core issues, so they write a check to back our work.
500

This Houston-raised Democrat, who's the same age as Joi, was drawn out of his congressional district and now the district is a toss up for party control

Greg Casar

500

We use this tool to optimize our stories on Wordpress for search

RankMath

500

The fastest growing ethnic culture in Texas

Indian

with Vietnamese Texans following close behind

500

This legendary CBS journalist went to high school in Houston and to UT for college

Walter Cronkite 
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