In October 2024, the Houston Chronicle reported that it had doubled the size of its investigations team under the direction of Editor-in-Chief and Senior Vice President Kelly Ann Scott. Scott came to the Houston Chronicle in 2023 from the Alabama Media Group (AL.com), where she was the editor-in-chief, vice president of content and the leader of a newsroom that earned a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. That same year, AL.com also won a Pulitzer for commentary. In less than two years at the Houston Chronicle, she’s led a newsroom transformation based on high-impact accountability journalism.
“We were pretty tactical in the first part of my time here, understanding digital trends and audience analytics — what’s working, what's not working — and we started making choices. The doubling of our investigations team came from making choices,” Scott said.
They began the expansion with internal personnel moves, adding to the original team of five.
On the heels of her impactful work for the Los Angeles Times and The Marshall Project, as well as as a documentary filmmaker and author, Keri Blakinger is the latest addition to the team. In June, she re-joined the Houston Chronicle’s newsroom as a senior investigative reporter.
“One of the things Kelly has done in her transformation is encourage a lot more collaboration across the room,” observed Yaffa Fredrick, senior director of investigations. “We have a wonderful data team, and we work in tandem with them. … We have an audience team that has social expertise. When we do these explainer videos — and we do about one a week now — we work with them to get it edited and up on those platforms and to strategize on the script.”
Fredrick said the team is adept at filing FOIA requests, compiling and analyzing data, and producing videos for social platforms like TikTok.
They also frequently partner with Hearst DevHub, a team of editorial engineers, AI developers, designers and content strategists. The team has partnered with external investigative outlets as well. This April, the Houston Chronicle was one of five Texas news publishers ProPublica and The Texas Tribune selected to form a coalition to “strengthen accountability journalism in local newsrooms across the state,” according to the announcement.
“Sort of a transformative moment was during Hurricane Beryl last July,” Fredrick said. “The full team hadn’t formed quite yet, but it was a moment where we could say, ‘Okay, what is the biggest issue people care about right now?’ Eighty-five percent of the city didn’t have power. People tend to care about that when it’s 100 degrees outside. But why is our power system failing us?”
“Our reporting was cited in the legislative hearings that followed,” Fredrick added. “This is what it means to ground the work in issues that people care about, and we saw audiences deeply engaged in that work and subscribing because of that work.”
They’ve mounted an investigation into property tax rates, and another focused on a lottery scandal and legislative remedies to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
“In 2025, we found developers were taking advantage of tax loophole depriving low-income Houstonians of housing,” Fredrick said, noting that the state legislature plans to close that loophole due to their reporting.
“We have a story today about the Houston Food Bank taking a cut,” Fredrick said. “A million people in the Houston region depend on the Houston Food Bank. … And when you’re cutting some Department of Agriculture grant, locally, we feel it. … We have 1,600 food pantries in the Houston region that the Houston Food Bank serves. These stories really matter.”
“We want to be essential,” Scott concurred. “Our impact and investigative work needs to be essential.”
Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She's reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.
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