What does it take to cover football in North Texas? 🏈

Katrice Hardy explains how we bring you comprehensive coverage all season long. ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏   [INSIDE THE NEWSROOM](     Why this Newsletter Matters We seek daily to produce journalism that drives discussion and impact and that ultimately helps our community prosper. This newsletter seeks to shed more light on our work and who we are in an effort to build more trust with you, our readers. Below is a look inside the DMN newsroom.   While football season kicked off just days ago, our planning for the 2024 season began in January. Why? Because we know for many of you, football is more than a fun sport. It’s a way of life. It screams Texas pride. It’s where so many of you spend countless hours with your kids on Friday nights or with your friends and family on Saturdays at colleges all over the country and then on Sundays, with so many of you rooting for dem’ Cowboys. Football is also a business that pumps millions of dollars into our state economy each year and is where some of our taxpayer dollars are spent in many of our North Texas communities. It’s such a big business for NFL owner Jerry Jones that his Cowboys are now the first professional football team to be valued at [$10 billion](, according to a recent article by the [sports business publication Sportico](. By comparison, the next most valued team, Sportico reported, is the West Coast’s Los Angeles Rams at $7.8 billion. Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Kelvin Harmon (84) gains yards after a catch as Los Angeles Rams cornerback Cam Lampkin (33) and linebacker Elias Neal (58) move in to make the stop in the second half of a preseason NFL football game, Sunday, Aug. 11, 2024, in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) Closer to home, the sport has reached new levels of excitement for Southern Methodist University. The college vigorously fought to join the ACC and it will play its first conference game later this month. This is why we cover football all year and why during the off season, we re-examine our coverage to ensure we are providing you with exclusive and informative journalism that you can’t find anywhere else. On any given week, 85 people are involved in our football coverage, from our full-time Cowboys, college and high school reporters and columnists, to multiple photojournalists, editors and designers and audience analysts, to many freelance and contract clerks who help us update scores for high school games all across the Metroplex, said Damon Marx, our deputy sports editor. “Our goal is not to tell you where the football is — you can get that information immediately on social media — we strive to tell you where the ball is going next and why. This applies to everything that happens in what I like to call the Cowboys Universe.” Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, shown at Cowboys training camp in Oxnard, Calif., on, July 27, 2024, bought the team in 1989 for $150 million. Sportico puts the team's current value at $10.32 billion. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) “Beyond the daily coverage from full-time Cowboys beat writers David Moore and Calvin Watkins, plus columnists Tim Cowlishaw and Kevin Sherrington and a team of photographers, what you can expect from us that you can’t get anywhere else is … accuracy, accountability and timely analysis,” Damon shared. The same is true for our other football coverage. Because of SMU’s leap to the ACC, Sports Editor Tommy Magelsson felt strongly that we needed to devote more resources to covering the team. So earlier this year, Lia Assimakopoulos was promoted to cover SMU as well as our favorite local hockey team, the Stars. While she knows it’s important to focus on stories about the players and recruiting efforts, she also is doing a great job of offering you insight into what goes on behind the scenes, stories ranging from the costs of facility upgrades to record-breaking fundraising. “I’m also excited to visit some of these ACC campuses and towns to share with readers what they can expect from some of these road trips,” Lia said. While Lia has moved on from high school coverage, we still have multiple journalists covering this full-time. I’m proud to say we’re the only media outlet in our region that covers over 150 public and private high schools every single week. That means we have staff at nearly 70 games each week, bringing the passion of Friday night football to our print and digital pages. And once again, it’s not just the box-scores that our team is chasing. The Dallas Morning News is writing about the issues high school sports athletes face — such as their health and concussions, the new NIL landscape and shifting demographics. Before her promotion, Lia personally wrote about population changes and how they impact high school football and about their transfer policies. If you don’t follow our football coverage, you aren’t fully informed. As always, we appreciate and couldn’t do this work without you. [Tell us if we’re missing something, if you hate it or like it, and how we can better serve you](mailto:katrice.hardy@dallasnews.com). And please, send us story ideas! Thank you for reading. Katrice Staff Spotlight David Moore, Cowboys reporter 1. What is your job and what do you love most about it? I cover the Cowboys. What I love most is easy. It's how much people care. For some it's a deep, unwavering, emotional attachment. Others love to hate. That makes for compelling narratives. There are so many stories to tell, so many entry points. It doesn't matter if you've followed this franchise since its inception or have become a fan recently. The Cowboys are part of the area's DNA and have an impact that resonates globally. 2. Where are you from and how long have you lived in the area? I grew up in Irving but wasn't born there, since it didn't have a hospital at the time. Yes, I'm that old. We then moved to Oak Cliff and I went to Kimball High School. I went to college at North Texas. 3. What are your hobbies? In no particular order: travel, hiking, art, movies and TV, live music, foodie (wish there was a better word to describe) and too-high-handicap golf. 4. What is the coolest thing you've ever done? My job has allowed me to interview and get to know high-profile sports personalities. I would never take that for granted. But that's my job. I've been blessed to have some wonderful experiences outside of work. Walking the Camino in northern Spain and hiking the Mendenhall Glacier in the Juneau icefield in Alaska rank at the top. 5. What do you want readers to know most about your work and the team? I understand the institutional skepticism that exists today. What's your agenda? That's a legitimate question many ask. Our agenda as journalists is talking to as many people as we can to paint a nuanced picture of the truth. It's to put what's happening in perspective regardless of ideology, bias or emotional attachment. Myself and Cowboys reporter Calvin Watkins take that role seriously. 6. What's your favorite book? One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.   EDITOR'S PICKS   [Disrupting crime: Violence drops in Dallas in 2024 as police target ‘high-risk’ locations]( So far in 2024, violent crime is down more than 12% in Dallas, with declines in murders and aggravated [...] [Chris Young doesn’t have a long-term deal. 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