The Star-Telegram has a Listening Tour. Here’s how it helps us tell Fort Worth’s story
If you’ve driven around Fort Worth much, you’ve probably seen them: concrete hulks more than 100 feet tall with shadows cast across railroad tracks. The structures are old grain elevators and silos.
They are representative of a time when Fort Worth was one of the largest grain storage centers in the country and was known as the “grain center of the Southwest.” Now they are largely abandoned.
To many of us, they are simply an oddity. But to some, they are an eyesore and a drain on the neighborhood they love. We heard that loud and clear from members of the Worth Heights Neighborhood Association when our newsroom staff met with them in May.
A representative of the neighborhood association had reached out to me in April after reading my column about the resumption of the Star-Telegram’s Listening Tour. We started the Listening Tour in the fall of 2019 but put it on hold during the pandemic.
The idea behind the tour is simple: A variety of journalists representing our news staff meet with groups or neighborhoods that have been historically under-covered or even misrepresented in news coverage over the years.
We ask the groups to tell us about their community, share story ideas and talk about the vision they have for Fort Worth’s future. We always walk away with a better understanding of part of our city and multiple story ideas.
Worth Heights is an historically Hispanic neighborhood south of downtown Fort Worth, between West Berry Street and West Seminary Drive to the north and south, and Interstate 35W and Hemphill Street to the east and west.
About 10 Star-Telegram journalists met with about 15 members of the Worth Heights Neighborhood Association on May 16 at the Victory Forest Community Center. We heard concerns about parking, street conditions, police engagement, code enforcement and more.
And we heard about the abandoned grain elevator and silos on Alice Street that have been a littered eyesore for years. Local government reporter Abby Church wrote a story about the structure and the frustration it causes for Worth Heights residents. Her story helped get the situation back on the public agenda.
Soon after Church’s story was published, she heard from a local nonprofit organization that would like to use the structure as part of its mission to help those experiencing homelessness, prompting another news story.
In the days after our meeting with association members, we also published a story on a celebration of the Worth Heights Neighborhood Association’s 25th anniversary. That allowed us to share some of many ways the association has worked to make Worth Heights a better place over the years.
Earlier this year, we took part in a meeting of the Lake Como Neighborhood Advisory Council, which represents an historically Black neighborhood west of downtown Fort Worth. That led to good stories, as well. And when unfortunate bad news happened there over the July 4 holiday weekend, the knowledge we had gained of the community allowed us to report on that with more context and sensitivity - to tell the story of what happened in a way that would not define the neighborhood by that tragic event.
The bottom line is that our Listening Tour is helping us to better connect with communities whose stories we want to tell, building better relationships along the way.
I’m looking to schedule the next stop in our Listening Tour in August. Would you like it to be in your neighborhood? Send me an email at scoffman@star-telegram.com or give me call at (817) 390-7704.
