Earlier this year, The Frontier published an investigation into the deaths of people held in Tulsa’s city jail.
Our reporter, Garrett Yalch, spent months digging through records, interviewing families and examining how people arrested for relatively minor offenses ended up dead in city custody.
We found that seven people had died in the jail over three years. We uncovered records that the city kept from the public. And we obtained disturbing video showing a man who was taken to jail instead of a hospital, where he died within an hour.
The next day, Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols ordered the jail closed.
I think about that investigation a lot because it represents exactly why The Frontier exists.
Without a reporter asking difficult questions, requesting records and refusing to accept easy answers, would the public have learned what was happening inside that jail? Would anything have changed?
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The Frontier is a nonprofit newsroom. Your donation pays reporters to investigate powerful institutions across Oklahoma.
Become a donorFor more than a decade, The Frontier has operated on the belief that Oklahomans deserve to know what their government is doing, how their money is being spent and whether the institutions entrusted with their safety and well-being are living up to their responsibilities.
They deserve that information regardless of where they live, how they vote or what they believe.
Our commitment to that principle has never been more evident than it has been in 2026.
Our reporters have produced some of the most ambitious, consequential journalism in Oklahoma this year. I believe that work stands alongside the best investigative reporting being done anywhere in the country.
We don’t investigate Republicans because they’re Republicans. We don’t investigate Democrats because they’re Democrats. We investigate people and institutions that wield power because the public deserves accountability.
The stories we’ve published this year have taken us to rural communities worried about their drinking water, small towns facing industrial development, detention facilities, courtrooms, homeless encampments and neighborhoods where people feel their voices have been ignored.
We believe those stories matter just as much as what happens at the state Capitol.
And look what we’ve uncovered.
Clifton Adcock has spent much of the year investigating Oklahoma’s rapidly expanding data center industry. His reporting exposed secrecy agreements between developers and public officials, examined the enormous water demands of these facilities and revealed how communities have been kept in the dark about projects that could reshape their futures.
Kayla Branch has followed those developments into rural Oklahoma, where residents are fighting projects they fear will change their communities forever. She’s also investigated industrial pollution, threats to Oklahoma’s water resources and the environmental records of companies seeking to do business here.
And in one of the year’s most remarkable investigations, Kayla followed the stories of vulnerable Oklahomans recruited to California with promises of free addiction treatment, only to find themselves stranded far from home.
Working with ProPublica, Nick Bowlin has investigated failures in Oklahoma’s regulation of the oil and gas industry. His reporting uncovered hundreds of violations regulators failed to address, documented families living with contaminated water and examined threats to drinking water supplies near Enid.
These are stories about people’s homes, their health, their communities and their futures.
Ari Fife investigated Oklahoma’s role in fast-tracking a massive immigration detention center in Watonga, raising questions about government oversight and conditions inside. Ari also examined how an anti-abortion organization helped rewrite state law after being rejected for public funding.
Ashlynd Huffman investigated allegations of mistreatment at a boarding school for girls and exposed how Oklahoma’s system allows police officers suspected of misconduct to move between agencies without the public being able to track their histories.
Maddy Keyes has spent the year examining how Oklahoma treats people experiencing homelessness and poverty. She documented the consequences of the state’s homeless encampment sweeps, exposed court hearings lasting less than a minute and found that some judges refuse to waive court debt for people who cannot afford to pay, despite what state law requires.
And she told the story of one Oklahoman whose life changed when that debt was finally forgiven.
Frontier Managing Editor Brianna Bailey examined how millions of dollars raised for Black Lives Matter OKC ended up in one woman’s bank account and reported on a series of Navy suicides at Tinker Air Force Base.
During this year’s elections, our newsroom scrutinized candidates and their claims, examined political spending and helped voters understand the choices in front of them. We reported on Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei’s personal loans to his campaign and the concerns of Inola residents about a proposed smelter he supports.
When we launched The Frontier in 2015, we were a small newsroom with an ambitious mission: Produce independent, investigative journalism that demands accountability.
More than 11 years later, that mission hasn’t changed. But the scope of our work has grown enormously.
Today, our reporters are tackling investigations that take weeks or months to complete. We’re collaborating with national news organizations, expanding our coverage and finding new ways to bring our journalism to Oklahomans.
And we’re doing it without a paywall.
Every investigation, every public record we uncover and every story we publish is available to anyone who wants to read it.
That’s possible because readers believe this work is worth supporting.
During this year’s NewsMatch campaign, we’re asking 100 readers to become new donors to The Frontier. Reaching that goal will make us eligible for $50,000 in matching funds.
A monthly gift of $5, $10 or $25 helps pay for the time it takes to uncover stories that powerful people would sometimes prefer to remain hidden.
It helps us send reporters into communities that don’t receive enough attention. It helps us challenge government secrecy, examine public spending and hold institutions accountable. And it helps ensure that our reporting remains free for every Oklahoman.
I am enormously proud of what this newsroom has accomplished in 2026 and I’m even more excited about what we can do next. There are more stories to tell, more records to uncover and more questions that deserve answers. We have the reporters, the determination and the experience to do that work.
If you’ve read a Frontier investigation this year and learned something you didn’t know, if our reporting has challenged your assumptions or helped you better understand Oklahoma, I hope you’ll consider becoming one of those 100 donors.
Become one of our 100 new donors. Support The Frontier today.
Dylan Goforth helped launch The Frontier in 2015. He became Executive Editor in 2017. He covers politics and criminal justice.
Contact: dylan@readfrontier.com or 918-931-9405.