We all need to know about our community. It makes for better decisions.  A common set of facts makes for better community cohesion.

Local community newspapers, which are focused on the local nature of things, go a long way toward those outcomes. So says  William McKenzie, Senior Edutiruak Advisor at the Bush Institute. Accordingly, McKenzie has expertise in American democracy, combatting disinformation, and freedom and democracy. All good skills for this time when we are blurring the lines between truth and spin.

According to his profile on the institute website, before joining the Bush Institute, the Fort Worth, TX native served 22 years as an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News and led the newspaper’s Texas Faith blog. The University of Texas graduate’s columns appeared nationwide and he has won a Pulitzer Prize and commentary awards from the Education Writers Association, the American Academy of Religion, and the Texas Headliners Foundation, among other organizations.

Before joining the News in 1991, he earned a master’s degree in political science from the University of Texas at Arlington and spent a dozen years in Washington, D.C. During that time, he edited the Ripon Forum.

McKenzie has served as a Pulitzer Prize juror, as a volunteer with and board member of homeless organizations in Dallas and Washington, and on governing committees of a Dallas public school. He is a member of the Fort Worth Independent School District’s Hall of Fame and an elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Dallas, where he lives with his wife and their twin children.

For more about McKinley's mission to inform and protect democracy through accurate information and support of community journalism, click here.