Technical.ly is launching innovation ecosystem coverage in Fort Worth

The fastest growing big city in the United States is also now its 10th most populous: Fort Worth. Its aerospace and energy economy is changing just as quickly, and we want to be part of that change.

Technical.ly has selected Fort Worth as our newest market, we’re announcing today, bringing the local innovation ecosystem storytelling that we’ve developed over the past two decades. We win awards for our thoughtful, balanced and independent storytelling that uplifts residents and communities, and we’re hiring now for our first local voice.

I cofounded Technical.ly to amplify and hold accountable the places that intend to give their residents more opportunity by prioritizing entrepreneurship, science, technology and innovation. Started in the US Mid-Atlantic, we’ve since expanded to Louisiana, North Dakota and North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

As the country’s largest and longest-running newsroom focused on innovation economies, we knew we needed to join the Texas miracle. Fort Worth’s rise is particularly dizzying, yet widely unknown outside of North Texas. Starting in 2027, we’ll contribute to documenting — and shaping — the change. 

When the Dallas-Fort Worth airport opened in 1974, Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, was home to just 750,000 residents. That has now tripled.

Fort Worth proper is also speeding along. It added close to 110,000 net new residents in five years, putting it up 12% since 2020 and crossing 1 million in total population. That’s the fastest growth of the 50 largest American cities.

Institutions have noticed. In July, the region’s Federal Reserve Bank split the combined Dallas-Fort Worth economic report it had published since 2016 and began issuing separate Fort Worth-Arlington indicators. Something similar is happening to Fort Worth’s startup, technology and sciences ecosystem, and Technical.ly intends to narrate the transformation.

The city’s historic strengths in aerospace, defense, logistics and manufacturing are the kind of industrial foundation new technology builds on rather than replaces. Its entrepreneurial community is growing. And the expanding Texas A&M-Fort Worth campus, which opened its first academic building in August and has four others planned, anchors an emerging Switchyard Innovation District. 

Innovation districts are a nationally popular model for clustering research, startups and a skilled workforce with the goal of boosting the local economy, and Switchyard represents a serious bet on Fort Worth’s potential to become a place where new technologies are commercialized and scaled.

Our news organization narrates the story of places backing dynamic economic growth with deep conviction. Fort Worth is. 

Population and investment alone don’t make an economy more dynamic, though. What matters is whether they convert into new firms, better careers and opportunity for more residents. That conversion is one of the main threads we intend to follow.

More than business news

Since 2009, Technical.ly established a specialized form of local journalism focused on innovation economies, focused on mounting research that shows high-growth entrepreneurship drives local economies that benefits more residents. We’re now the country’s longest-running newsroom dedicated to this beat.

Plenty of important business news gets covered elsewhere. Our focus is deliberately narrower, built on three principles.

We’re pro-entrepreneurship, which is different from pro-business. Established companies and new challengers don’t always want the same things. Decades of economic research show that new firm creation, especially the small subset that grows into significant employers, is what drives economic dynamism. We follow those founders, their companies and the conditions that help or hinder them. We’re not here to cheerlead for business interests generally, especially when they’re at odds with entrepreneurs.

We cover technologists and scientists, not just owners. Entrepreneurs are essential, yet ownership isn’t the only way to participate in an innovation economy. Scientists, engineers, developers and other skilled workers create value inside startups, research institutions and established employers — and their skills drive the productivity gains that lift whole communities. Who gets access to those careers matters as much as who starts the next big company.

We are part of the ecosystems we report on, instead of trying to maintain distance. No entrepreneur succeeds alone. Universities, investors, employers, customers, educators and civic institutions form a distributed network that makes company creation possible. Our journalism helps that network understand itself. To do this and truly understand it — so we can provide the most honest reporting — we join the communities we serve. 

Our theory of change is straightforward: New businesses renew regional economies. Technical and scientific skills help them grow. Free information makes both more accessible.

Independent journalism, transparently disclosed

Our initial primary underwriter in this region is the Fort Worth-Tarrant County Innovation Partnership, the public-private organization building the Switchyard Innovation District, funded by the City of Fort Worth, Tarrant County and Texas A&M University. As with the economic development organizations supporting our work in other markets, that investment is what lets us hire local journalists and distribute their work nationally.

Our underwriters help determine where we report. They don’t determine what we report, and they have no editorial oversight. 

Look at our 18 years of coverage: consistent in always wanting the best for the places we serve, but knowing that sometimes means pointing out a challenging trend or identifying bad actors. That distinction is foundational. Our track record speaks for itself.

This also means no paywall. We want this journalism found through search engines and AI tools, shared widely and republished by other newsrooms with attribution and permission. The goal isn’t to compete to tell the parts of Fort Worth’s story already being told. It’s to help more people understand and contribute to a story of entrepreneurship and innovation-led economic change that isn’t being told at the level Fort Worth commands. We’re an ecosystem resource.

Expect reporting on the founders, startups, technologists and research shaping the city, plus data journalism and national benchmarking. Some federal datasets exist only at the Dallas-Fort Worth metro level, and we’ll say so when we use them. But where the data allows, and it usually does, we’ll report Fort Worth and Tarrant County on their own terms.

We’ll cover the wins and the confrontations both. Capital gaps, workforce barriers and the uneven effects of fast growth belong alongside funding rounds and scientific breakthroughs. Not all of it will be good news. All of it should contribute to a stronger Fort Worth.

Join us!

We’re hiring a dedicated Fort Worth-based reporter to lead this coverage, supported by our national newsroom and its experience across geographies.

We’re launching our first Fort Worth newsletter alongside the reporting, bringing together the people, companies, jobs and developments shaping the region’s innovation economy.

And if you’re a founder, researcher, technologist, investor, educator or organizer here, we want to hear from you. Fill out this short interest form or message us directly: [email protected]. Our newsroom intends to listen first, make connections and then report the stories that matter to the people building this economy.

Innovation can happen anywhere. We’ve seen what’s taking shape in Fort Worth. We’d like the rest of the country to see it too.