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Chris Essig is the data visuals editor at The Texas Tribune. Based in Austin, he leads a team of developers who build charts, maintain public databases and analyze data to help reporters hold elected officials accountable. Chris has been a newsroom developer for 10 years and has worked in several local newsrooms. As a native of the Midwest, Chris received his journalism degree from Eastern Illinois University and spent six years in Iowa working at The Gazette in Cedar Rapids and at the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier in Waterloo.
Frustration, anxiety and anger prevailed in the survey responses obtained by the The Texas Tribune and Military Times. The survey includes responses from nearly 250 members of Task Force South, one of six units that fall under the umbrella of Operation Lone Star. Full Story
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Texas falls short, again, of the pandemic record for COVID-19 hospitalizations, while daily deaths are expected to continue rising for several more days. Full Story
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A staffing crisis and the surge from the omicron variant have pushed the number of Texas ICU beds to a new record low. The shortage affects not just patients with the coronavirus, but every Texan seeking serious medical care. Full Story
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The Texas Tribune’s database of Texas state employees’ compensation is updated to represent salaries as of Jan. 1. It includes detailed data for the 112 agencies in state government and positions at each of those agencies. Full Story
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In 2021, the Tribune’s data visuals team helped tell the biggest stories affecting Texans. Here’s a roundup of our most impactful work. Full Story
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The Texas Department of State Health Services, which tracks the number of coronavirus vaccinations, cases, hospitalizations and deaths across the state, won’t be updating its daily dashboard Friday through Sunday both this week and next over the holidays. Full Story
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Our tracker presents the latest on tests, cases, hospitalizations, people who died and vaccinations. We want to know how this information can be more valuable to readers. Full Story
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The Texas Tribune’s database of Texas state employees’ compensation has been updated to represent salaries as of Sept. 30. This update also includes new job descriptions and salary ranges for many positions. Full Story
The state’s Hispanic population is now nearly as large as the non-Hispanic white population, with Texas gaining nearly 11 Hispanic residents for every additional white resident since 2010. Those trends set up a pitched battle for political control when state lawmakers redraw legislative districts. Full Story
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Voters in some urban, Democratic areas of Harris and Tarrant counties would see a drastic drop in polling places under the Senate version of Senate Bill 7, a Texas Tribune analysis shows. Full Story
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