To find readers for longform investigations, Public Health Watch leans on partners and in-person work

In the natural world, convergent evolution is when two organisms independently evolve to look or behave in very similar ways. The beloved — if endangered and chlamydia-ridden — koala evolved human-like fingerprints despite last sharing a common ancestor more than 100 million years ago. Humans are even less closely related to cephalopods and yet the octopus evolved lens-and-retina eyes remarkably similar to our own. In convergent evolution, certain features or behaviors can emerge on distant branches of the evolutionary tree if the species are in similar environments and if the adaptations help the species survive.

That brings us to the nonprofit news site Public Health Watch … and a project that might sound familiar.

A few months ago, I reported on how The Texas Tribune is experimenting with new kinds of distribution, including returning to a majority-Latino community affected by pollution to hand out information. Months earlier, in a neighboring community outside of Houston, the smaller Public Health Watch had done very similar work. (The Texas Tribune and Public Health Watch have collaborated in the past but the Tribune team said they’d been unaware of Public Health Watch’s engagement project before embarking on their own.)

Nonprofit newsrooms are operating in an environment — with limited funding and attention spans, diminishing returns on social, and record-low trust in media — that is forcing them to adapt to survive. It appears Public Health Watch and The Texas Tribune converged on similar solutions to their common problems. Both newsrooms prioritized in-person engagement; handed out printed materials in English and Spanish in neighborhoods affected by pollution; partnered with on-the-ground groups already working on local environmental issues; and sought out Spanish-language publications and reporters as partners.

Public Health Watch was founded in 2021 by longtime investigative journalist Jim Morris to investigate “weaknesses and injustices in the nation’s health infrastructure and policies.” Like many nonprofit news orgs, the outlet relies on grants for revenue and accepts individual donations as well. It’s also part of the 60% of nonprofit newsrooms, according to the Institute for Nonprofit News, that primarily publishes investigations and explanatory reporting. The emphasis on resource-intensive reporting means fewer, longer stories for nonprofit outlets than their peers in daily news — a cadence that can make audience-building a challenge.

Morris, who serves as executive director and editor-in-chief, has described the outlet as telling “complicated stories that many other journalists won’t touch because of the time commitment and storytelling challenges involved.” “Sometimes it can be hard to resist jumping onto the breaking-news bandwagon,” he added, “but my feeling is that there’s plenty of excellent daily health coverage. We need to go in a different direction.”

Public Health Watch shares work on Twitter/X, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Traffic to the news site is “modest,” Morris acknowledged. Public Health Watch allows other outlets to republish their work for free and relies on partner news orgs to help its investigative journalism find more readers. The award-winning series on the failure of environmental agencies to address toxic emissions in Channelview, a majority-Latino neighborhood, for example, appeared in Business Insider, Texas Standard, Palabra, and Houston Landing, among others.

“One thing that’s really foundational to our model is collaborative stories. I know that’s a really common term and it can get thrown around a lot but we understand that we can’t just run something on our website on its own,” said Public Health Watch staff writer David Leffler. “People don’t go to Public Health Watch instinctively, right? It’s not in their bookmarks.”

An early collaboration with Ana Bueno, environmental reporter for the Univision-affiliated Noticias 45 Houston, was especially fruitful. Bueno transformed the lengthy investigation into a nine-minute television spot. She also moderated a well-attended town hall — alongside Leffler and a panel of environmental experts — in the community and helped spread word of the event. (A higher portion of Hispanic adults report getting their news from Instagram. Bueno has nearly 27,000 followers on the platform; Public Health Watch has 331.) The town hall drew local residents, environmental activists, and local firefighters — who, Leffler noted, are often the ones called to respond to chemical emergencies in the area.

Many news distribution partnerships are, essentially, co-publication of one outlet’s work. In contrast, Leffler said Univision took the information he and the Public Health Watch team uncovered and truly “made their own story.”

“We would love to do more hands-on collaboration in the midst of story creation,” Leffler said. “Whenever we’re producing a story, in the back of our minds, we’re always [asking], ‘Okay, where should this go? Which outlets would want this?’ It’s a win-win. We bring you a free story — which, in the case of Channelview, was a years-long investigation — and in exchange we just ask that you get it in front of your audiences.”

Leffler emphasized the team effort behind the reporting and outreach projects. For the printed handouts, Isabel Simpson managed to compress a 7,000-word story — plus accompanying charts, illustrations, and photos — into a 14-page mini-magazine. Public Health Watch distributed copies in English and Spanish in local restaurants, hardware stores, barbershops, libraries, and community centers. Leffler solicited additional help when it was time to hand them out door-to-door.

“There’s a decent number of people who are undocumented [in Channelview],” Leffler explained. “It’s a jolting experience for some stranger to come to your door so we worked with people who lived in the area to help distribute them.” (The Texas Tribune team took similar trust-building measures.)

The investigation has caught the attention of at least one elected official. Texas State Sen. Carol Alvarado, whose district includes the unincorporated community of Channelview, told Leffler the story would become the blueprint for legislation she plans to introduce. (The Texas state legislature convenes for 140 days every two years and won’t start up again until January 2025.) In the meantime, Leffler continues to report from the area — often bringing his dog along for company on the three-hour drive from his home in Austin.

“There can be a lot of mistrust of outsiders and journalists, especially,” Leffler said, describing the community he’s grown to know well. “They’ve had people parachute in before. I really try to emphasize that we’ve spent a lot of time here and we’re not just going to drop this on you and leave. We’re not like, ‘Hey, we did a great job and we won some awards. Let’s bounce.'”

Leffler isn’t done telling the story of Channelview. A forthcoming podcast — an environmental justice show currently titled “Fumed” — will highlight the people affected by pollution and state failures.