Houston Chronicle hires Kimble to cover impact of Texas policies on economy

Megan Kimble

The Houston Chronicle hired Megan Kimble for its Austin bureau, where she’ll cover the impact of Texas policies on the state’s economy and the people who live there.

Texas editor Jeremy Blackman writes, “This is a new beat for the Chronicle, and Megan is a natural choice to help shape it. In her seven years in Texas, she has delivered powerful stories on housing, transportation and local governance. Most recently, she published a book this spring about urban freeways and the outcomes from their seemingly endless expansion in Texas (you can find an adapted excerpt in the Chronicle here).

“Megan has a keen ability to translate jargon and find deeply human stories in the most underwatched corners of bureaucracy. For her book, she followed residents in Houston, Dallas and Austin who risk losing their homes and businesses to planned highway expansions. She found evidence that the Texas Department of Transportation is violating the National Environmental Policy Act. And she shed light on the political reasons behind why so much of the state’s transportation budget is diverted to roadways instead of public transportation.

“Previously, Megan served as the executive editor at the Texas Observer, where she helped shepherd investigations into rural healthcare, abandoned oil wells and the deaths of hundreds of inmates in Texas jails. She’s also written for the Texas Monthly, Bloomberg, The New York Times and the Guardian, among other publications.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.