{"id":3055,"date":"2022-07-08T16:29:23","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T16:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/?p=3055"},"modified":"2025-12-04T15:26:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:26:14","slug":"meet-jim-morris-executive-director-and-editor-in-chief-public-health-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/2022\/07\/08\/meet-jim-morris-executive-director-and-editor-in-chief-public-health-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Jim Morris, Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, Public Health Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Morris is the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of Public Health Watch, a nonpartisan investigative news site focused on the prevention of illness, injury and premature death. Public Health Watch\u2019s coverage of health inequities, environmental injustice and the impact of pollution on communities includes <\/span>this in-depth look at toxic air pollution in Harris County, Texas<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How did you first get interested in public health?<\/b><\/p>\n

I got into journalism in 1978, and I became interested in the petrochemical industry while working in Galveston, Texas, near the chemical plants and refineries along the Houston Ship Channel. I spent nine years as an investigative projects reporter with the Houston Chronicle in the 1990s, and that\u2019s where I really decided that this should be the focus of my career: toxic exposures in the workplace and communities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I felt like most journalists weren\u2019t paying attention to these issues. When something blew up, of course, that was front-page news. But the rest of the time, workers were dying of cancer, community members were dying prematurely, kids had asthma, and nobody was paying attention. People would say, \u201cThat\u2019s just the way it is.\u201d I never thought that should be the way it is. Laws are supposed to protect workers and the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

You launched Public Health Watch last summer, and your <\/b>series on air pollution in Texas<\/b><\/a>, and specifically <\/b>this feature<\/b><\/a> on the fight to hold polluters accountable in Harris County, tells a powerful story about the people exposed to the health harms of air pollution. What are you hoping to accomplish with this site?<\/b><\/p>\n

There are other nonprofit news outlets that are great at what they do, but we want to go much deeper. We\u2019re not going to run away from a 10,000-word story if we think that\u2019s what it takes to get someone engaged in a topic. Especially for something like air pollution\u2013we\u2019re in a good position to connect the dots and go deeper.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Harris County piece, we connected voter suppression with pollution control, when most wouldn\u2019t necessarily make that connection. The ability to choose your local elected officials really can have an impact on things like environmental enforcement. It\u2019s a clich<\/span>\u00e9<\/span>, but it\u2019s about trying to go much deeper than the usual \u201cthis happened yesterday.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to stay focused on this topic of Texas air pollution at least for the rest of this year. We have four to six substantial investigative pieces in the works. This doesn\u2019t include shorter, newsier pieces.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What role can investigative journalism play in bringing about change for communities most impacted by air pollution?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, with this story, we don\u2019t know yet. But just looking at social media\u2013the story was being shared and liked by people we had never heard of before. People from all over the world. It was pretty remarkable and indicated to us that we had struck a nerve or done something beyond the ordinary. And a Texas state representative from Houston said she was \u201cdeeply disturbed\u201d by our findings and would propose legislation next year to crack down on polluters.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re not expecting miracles here. Rarely do you see immediate impact; I\u2019ve done projects where I\u2019ve found out years later that something I wrote led to a policy change. The more of these stories we do, however, the greater the chances of impact.<\/span><\/p>\n

What gives you hope?<\/b><\/p>\n

People like [Harris County Attorney] Christian Menefee and [Harris County Judge] Lina Hidalgo\u2013young elected officials of color who genuinely care about the people in fenceline communities. They\u2019re doing what they can to crack down on chronic air pollution. Those two are genuinely inspiring. If you get enough people like them holding local and, ultimately, state office, that\u2019s when you\u2019ll see real change.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Morris is the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of Public Health Watch, a nonpartisan investigative news site focused on the prevention of illness, injury and premature death. Public Health Watch\u2019s coverage of health inequities, environmental injustice and the impact of pollution on communities includes this in-depth look at toxic air pollution in Harris County, Texas.\u00a0 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150429,"featured_media":3056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12,14,23,26,29],"tags":[],"coauthors":[63],"class_list":["post-3055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-justice","category-health","category-houston","category-partners","category-science","category-usa"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/150429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4340,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions\/4340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/global-clean-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}