We’re Sharpening Our Focus

• Joe Wertz
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Joe Wertz was a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2011-2019. He reported on energy and environment issues for national NPR audiences and other national outlets. He previously worked as a managing editor, assistant editor and staff reporter at several major Oklahoma newspapers and studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Joe Wertz / NPR StateImpact

You might notice a few changes on the StateImpact Oklahoma site over the next few days.

We’re refining our focus a bit to emphasize what matters most: people.

Call it a fine-tuning.

Some of the changes are simple site reorganizations and e-housekeeping chores, but we’re sharpening our editorial mission a bit to focus on how government policy impacts Oklahoma’s workforce.

The state budget plays a primary role in the lives of Oklahoma workers, and we’ll continue to examine how state-level changes in spending, appropriations, policy and procedure impact life in Oklahoma.

But federal policy and tribal governments also play a big role in Oklahoma’s economy, as do influential industry leaders. We’ll be examining those as well.

Basically: we’ll be doing less reporting on budgets, measures and bills as government documents that lawmakers pitch, discuss, file and amend, and concentrate on the effects.

Our best stories already do that, so this is a direct response to our readers’ response.

Oklahoma’s legislative session starts Monday. Gov. Mary Fallin will kick things off by presenting her executive budget to the Legislature and unveiling details about her “history-making” income tax reduction plan.

We’ll be there, live-blogging, broadcasting and reporting on which policies, plans and state spending priorities will impact Oklahoma’s workforce the most — and how.

Navigation Tweaks

We are going to be renaming and reorganizing two of our coverage categories. ‘Industry’ and ‘The Workforce’ will be added where ‘The Basics’ and ‘Influence’ used to be.

Here’s a breakdown of the new topic categories and a description of the content they’ll contain.

‘Policy’
How policy decisions affect Oklahoma’s workforce and economy.

‘Trends’
The metrics on the state economy, what’s changing in the job landscape, and how Oklahoma stacks up.

‘The Workforce’
Stories about the people and the pipeline to jobs.

‘Industry’
The big movers and shakers when it comes to employment in Oklahoma.

We’ll start making the changes today and over the weekend, but we will likely be making a few tweaks here and there for the next week or so.

Please email me if you see something wonky or can’t find what you’re looking for!