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Morgan Smith

Morgan Smith’s staff photo

Morgan Smith was a reporter at the Tribune from 2009 to 2018, covering politics, public education and inequality. In 2013, she received a National Education Writers Association award for “Death of a District,” a series on school closures. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Wellesley College, she moved to Austin in 2008 to enter law school at the University of Texas. A San Antonio native, her work has also appeared in Slate, where she spent a year as an editorial intern in Washington D.C.

Past Contributions

  • The Party Line

    By Morgan Smith

    This weekend, some 14,000 true believers will congregate in Dallas for the state Republican convention, the largest such gathering in the nation. Other than electing a chairman, the main event will be developing a platform — a manifesto meant to be the ideal vision for the future of the Texas GOP. Just don't ask them all to agree to it. If they did, “it'd be a very dull convention and a very short document,” says Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. Full Story 

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    Credit: Graphic by Jacob Villanueva

  • The New Tenthers

    By Morgan Smith

    Conservatives in Texas are invoking the 10th Amendment at every whistle-stop. But what rights does it actually protect? Full Story 

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    Credit: Graphic by Jacob Villanueva

  • Debra Lehrmann: The TT Interview

    By Morgan Smith

    The Texas Supreme Court justice-to-be (she'll take retiree Harriet O'Neill's seat on June 21) talks about about judicial elections, the recent ethics complaint filed against her and what happens when she disagrees with the law. Full Story 

    Judge Debra Lehrmann sits for a portrait at the Four Seasons in Austin, Texas on Thursday June 3, 2010.
    Credit: Spencer Selvidge

  • TribBlog: It's Lehrmann

    By Morgan Smith

    Gov. Rick Perry has appointed Judge Debra Lehrmann to the Place 3 seat that Harriet O’Neill will soon vacate on the Texas Supreme Court. Lehrmann, a Fort Worth District Court judge, won the Republican nomination for that seat in a runoff against former state Rep. Rick Green, R-Dripping Springs. Full Story 

    Debra Lehrmann

  • "Accidents Happen Sometimes"

    By Morgan Smith

    In the wake of the BP catastrophe, former Railroad Commissioner Barry Williamson is defending the federal Minerals Management Service, which he led during the Exxon Valdez spill. “Was there a failure of regulation? I don't know," he says. "There may not have been." Full Story 

    Elizabeth Birnbaum, who resigned on May 27, 2010, as director of the federal Mineral Management Service.
    Credit: Minerals Management Service

  • Are You Ready for Some Football?

    By Morgan Smith

    Allen High School is a study in bigness: A 5,000-student campus with a 650-member marching band supporting a football team that draws 8,000 fans to away games. And now — the pinnacle of suburban spoils — the Collin County community will break ground on an 18,000-seat stadium, the largest occupied by a single team. Pricetag: $60 million. Full Story 

    Clockwise from top left: an architect's rendering of the new stadium; Allen players after the 2008 state championship in Houston; Allen students at a game in the current stadium; the front of Allen High.
    Credit: Graphic by Jacqueline Mermea