Huff joins Texas Tribune as new East Texas reporter

Former Lufkin Daily News staff writer Jess Huff has joined the Texas Tribune as its East Texas reporter.

Huff, who won numerous investigative reporting awards while writing for the LDN, continues to be based in Lufkin as she reports on issues of importance throughout the Pineywoods region.

“This is a goal I have worked toward for several years, and I hope to use my position to raise the voices of East Texans.” Huff said. “So often, rural regions are only covered by the aspects of these regions in trouble, and while that is important, I also aim to point out where East Texans succeed.

We need to discuss problems with health and access to broadband, but we also need to show areas of community resilience and improvement.”

Huff grew up in Utah and also lived in Arizona and the Netherlands before moving to East Texas to write for the LDN. She attended Northern Arizona University on a debate scholarship before gravitating to journalism after a course on alternative storytelling devices.

During her time at the LDN, Huff won numerous awards at the Texas Managing Editors annual contest, including first place honors for Star Investigative Report of the Year in 2021 and a sweep of that category in 2022.

In 2023, she and former LDN editor Jeff Pownall took first place in TME’s Community Service category – one of the top honors of the competition – for a yearlong series of stories, columns and editorials on sexual assault in Angelina County.

Earlier this fall, Huff was among a select group of national journalists awarded honors by America’s Newspapers in the Carmage Walls Commentary Prize contest, earning third place in the under-35,000 circulation column-writing category for the 2022 sexual assault series.