Meet the community members who will add their views to Star-Telegram Editorial Board
Good journalists are always looking for new and better ways to connect with the communities they cover.
It’s important not just for news reporters but for opinion writers, too. The Star-Telegram Editorial Board’s mission is to deeply examine a vast range of local issues and offer readers informed viewpoints, built on solid reporting and arguments, to help them better understand their world.
To improve on how we do that, we’re creating a Community Advisory Board. We’re inviting three passionate, engaged area residents to interact regularly with our Editorial Board for the next three months. They’ll join some of our meetings to discuss the issues we consider, offer their perspectives and ask questions we may not have thought of.
We’re also encouraging them to raise ideas we haven’t considered, based on what’s happening in their neighborhoods, businesses, churches and schools. Our first members will serve during the run-up to local municipal and school-board elections, so we’ll invite them to sit in as we interview candidates for public office.
Our commitment is to have this unpaid board represent, over time, the vast diversity of our community and a broad range of viewpoints and beliefs. That includes location, age, race and ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, occupation and ideological points of view. What they’ll all share is engagement in their communities and public life, along with a dedication to service.
I’m proud to introduce our first Community Advisory Board members:
Dr. Brian J. Dixon is a psychiatrist and social-justice advocate who’s an assistant professor of psychiatry at the TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine. Among the issues he’s passionate about are health-care reform and improving mental-health services.
Service and community engagement are important because “as cliche as it sounds, we are better together,” said Dixon, 40, who lives in Fort Worth with his partner. “When we do things together, we tend to become more than the sum of our parts.”
Dixon was raised in Lufkin and attended Baylor University.
Anette Landeros, 37, is president of the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. She said that Fort Worth is at a “pivotal point” in its growth.
“I want everyone to have a say in our city’s trajectory, and it’s important to bring diverse voices and perspectives and thoughts and make sure we are growing our city” in a way that benefits everyone, she said.
One of the crucial issues Landeros identified is the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on small-business owners. Entrepreneurs who want to rebuild their businesses will need a broad range of support, she said.
Landeros grew up in San Antonio and worked in Washington before coming to Fort Worth, where she lives with her husband and 1-year-old son, Joaquin.
Rebekah Warwick is a 27-year-old Grand Prairie resident who works for a conservative political group. Her service, she says, is driven by a desire to see a better world for her children, ages 3 and 2.
“Being a mom, it’s important to know what’s happening in my neighborhood, what’s happening in my city, that they get a good education,” she said. “I want them to have a magical childhood and be able to obtain whatever they want” in life.
Warwick, an Illinois native, said she was glad to join the advisory board because “we’ll all have different ideas, things we’re seeing in our particular area [that will be] really beneficial to not only those who write those stories, but those who read them.”
We’re excited to put this group together. These three will serve for three months, then we’ll rotate in new members. We’re happy to take suggestions for potential members; email me any time with your ideas or your thoughts about our efforts to bring in more voices.
We hope as a result, you’ll see a broader range of issues and perspectives in our work, and that overall, we’ll see more engagement on the local issues that matter most.
As Dixon said: “Apathy is a disease. When people stop caring, that’s as bad as a lot of the ‘isms’ that are going on.”
