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Emily Ramshaw

Emily Ramshaw’s staff photo

Emily Ramshaw was the editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune from 2016 to 2020. During her tenure, the Tribune — billed “one of the nonprofit news sector’s runaway success stories” — won a Peabody Award, several national Murrow Awards and top honors from the Online News Association. Before joining the Tribune in 2010 as one of its founding reporters, Ramshaw spent six years at The Dallas Morning News, where she broke national stories about sexual abuse inside Texas’ youth lock-ups, reported from inside a West Texas polygamist compound and uncovered “fight clubs” inside state institutions for the disabled. The Texas APME named Ramshaw its 2008 star reporter of the year. In 2016, she was named to the board of the Pulitzer Prizes. A native of Washington, D.C., and the product of two journalist parents, Ramshaw graduated from Northwestern University in 2003 with dual degrees in journalism and American history.

Past Contributions

  • The Hispanic Paradox

    By Emily Ramshaw

    Many of the longest lives in Texas are lived in an unlikely place: along the impoverished border with Mexico, where residents often live until age 80 and beyond. Explanations for this so-called "Hispanic Paradox" range from theories about differences in the diet, faith and family values of first-generation South Texans to suggestions that natural selection is at play in immigration patterns. Full Story 

    Endoscopy tech Dora Facturan, right, prepares Maria Perez, 65, for a colonoscopy exam from Dr. Carlos Cardenas, back left, on December 8, 2010 at the Doctor's Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg. South Texans lead some of the longest lives in the state.
    Credit: Gabe Hernandez

  • The Stroke Belt

    By Emily Ramshaw

    The proof of East Texas' live-hard, die-young culture is in the bread pudding — and the all-you-can-eat fried catfish, the drive-through tobacco barns and the doughnut shops by the dozen. In a community where heavy eating and chain smoking are a way of life, where poverty, hard-headedness and even suspicion hinder access to basic health care, residents die at an average age of 73, or seven years earlier than the longest-living Texans, according to a preliminary county-by-county analysis by the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Full Story 

    Residents of East Texas, and particularly minorities, often make lifestyle choices, like smoking and eating high-fat diets, that affect their life expectancy.
    Credit: Lawrence Jenkins

  • Losing Dependence

    By Emily Ramshaw

    Federal health care reform’s biggest benefit for young adults — a mandate that insurance providers cover dependents until they reach age 26 — won’t apply to thousands of 25-year-old Texans for one simple reason: Their parents work for the state. The federal rule, which went into effect in late September, required all insurance providers to extend their cap to 26 at the start of their next “plan year.” For many private providers, that began Jan. 1. But the Texas Employees Retirement System plan year doesn't begin until next September, meaning 5,500 25-year-olds will miss out. Full Story 

    Kace Layton, 25, on the Texas State University campus in San Marcos. Layton was dropped from his grandmother's state insurance plan on his last birthday, even though federal health care reform expanded dependent coverage until age 26.
    Credit: Callie Richmond

  • TribBlog: Straus in the House

    By Emily Ramshaw

    The Texas House formally re-elected San Antonio Republican Speaker Joe Straus. By acclamation, they chose to stick with the moderate, "will-of-the-House" speaker as opposed to overthrowing him with someone more conservative. Full Story 

    Wallace Jefferson swearing in Joe Straus at the 82nd Legislative Session.
    Credit: Marjorie Kamys Cotera

  • TribBlog: State Shuts Daystar Center

    By Emily Ramshaw, The Texas Tribune, and Terri Langford, Houston Chronicle

    The state has shut down Daystar Residential Inc. in Manvel, the facility where The Texas Tribune and the Houston Chronicle revealed that staff had forced young girls with disabilities to fight each other. Full Story 

    The Dystar Residential Inc. campus, in Manvel, photographed on Friday, June 4, 2010.
    Credit: Nick de la Torre / The Houston Chronicle

  • Discharged?

    By Emily Ramshaw

    Advocates for shuttering Texas' institutions for people with disabilities say they have a big plus in their column this session: the state’s giant budget crunch. Full Story 

    Austin State-Supported Living Center employee Tamika Mays is shown with resident Rebecca Hadnot in 2011.
    Credit: Todd Wiseman

  • Memories Lost

    By Emily Ramshaw

    When foster kids bounce from placement to placement, they leave their belongings with state child welfare workers — where advocates say they often get misplaced, given to the wrong child or even stolen. Full Story 

    Crystal Martinez sits with items recovered from Child Protective Services at her home in North Austin, Dec. 21, 2010.
    Credit: Callie Richmond

  • D is for Democratic

    By Emily Ramshaw and Matt Stiles

    Texas may be reddening, but Dallas County’s turning a darker shade of blue. While the GOP picked up hotly contested Dallas-area state House seats in November, the county voted for challenger Bill White over incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry by a margin of 12 percentage points. Straight-ticket voters also helped Democratic District Attorney Craig Watkins cling to his office in a squeaker and gave the County Commissioners Court its first Democratic majority in nearly 30 years. Full Story 

    Dallas County has grown increasingly Democratic in the last decade. In the map, darker precincts represent support for Democrats Tony Sanchez and Bill White, who ran in 2002 and 2010, respectively.
    Credit: Graphic by Ben Hasson/Matt Stiles