It’s not necessarily bigger than the press corps in other mega-states like California and New York, but the Texas press corps is unique, political watchers say, because of the shape it’s taking amid the state’s recent, raging growth. Aside from the Tribune, there are influential blogs and newsletters, a regional magazine of national renown, an energetic public radio presence and newly arrived national correspondents stationed in Austin. And that doesn’t even count the traditional newspaper and television presence. It doesn’t hurt that Texans love reading about Texas the notion of Texas exceptionalism, it seems, drives demand.
“Texas uniqueness and its self-conscious ‘apartness’ of Texas leads to more explicit and different coverage. You can’t assume that what’s happening in Texas happens in the same way everywhere else,” says Joshua Trevino, a rabid news consumer and the vice president of communications for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank and advocacy organization in Austin.
“I lived in California for five years, and even there you couldn’t generate interest in sustained fashion in the state. Here, there’s a market for Texans talking about Texas.”
The Texas Tribune tore into that market in 2009 as an experiment in niche-focused, nonprofit digital news. (Disclosure: This reporter was part of the launch and the Tribune’s first year.) Content is offered for free across digital platforms, coverage zeroes in on public policy and politics, and the organization collaborates with other news outlets, like The New York Times and major television stations that run its content. It’s funded not by subscriptions or advertisements in print pages the Tribune doesn’t have its own pages, after all but instead by corporate sponsorships, foundations and public support.
While it introduced itself to a national audience last week, the Tribune had already injected some energy into state reporting ranks that had dwindled in the aughts.
“What we needed was dramatic reform and new infrastructure,” says Jason Stanford, a former journalist turned Democratic political consultant. “Texas Tribune forced quick [digital] adaption.”
In the latter half of the last decade, the state’s major metro dailies like The Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram began buying out, laying off or otherwise saying farewell to its longtime Capitol watchdogs. That decline has not reversed itself, and probably won’t, but Texas Capitol watchers say the sheer presence of a new competitor has helped keep numbers from dropping further.
“There’s a major uptick in energy,” says Richard Parker, a Central Texas-based media critic at the Columbia Journalism Review. In 2011, Reuters hired its first Austin-based national correspondent. Bloomberg also added an Austin-based legislative reporter. The Morning News restaffed its bureau using part-time employees and others to come up to strength for the session. The Star-Telegram, which had closed its bureau, rehired its former bureau chief for the session.
“I do think that the Trib has forced people to pay more attention. And the organizations that made a decision not to collaborate with the Tribune, they’ve had to take steps to be competitive. That’s a beneficial side effect of the Trib just being present,” Parker says.
Outside Agitators
While they’re not traditional journalism organizations, advocacy groups have also discovered that they can drive conversations under the Capitol dome by using social media and blogging to turn the pressure on lawmakers. Regular readership of blogs by the Tea Party-aligned Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, led by libertarian Michael Quinn Sullivan, may hover in the four digits, but Sullivan gets a reaction.
“Sullivan actually moves the needle legislatively, and can have a bill reconsidered when he tweets something about it. Editorial boards once could do that,” says Harvey Kronberg, who heads The Quorum Report, a longtime newsletter for Texas political junkies.
Sullivan’s sites Empower Texans and AgendaWise (whose motto is “Turn Texas Redder”) surface policy arguments or call out lawmakers for being not sufficiently conservative.
“The only election that still counts in Texas is the Republican primary,” says Kronberg, who says that’s where Sullivan’s advocacy shows its strength. “Sullivan’s biggest scalp is [Lt. Gov. David] Dewhurst losing to [now U.S. Sen.] Ted Cruz.”
Advocacy organization blogs can also drive coverage on Texas-based talk radio. And that kind of connection to conservative base voters makes Republican lawmakers pay attention.
Establishment Strength
In Texas, the establishment outlets even if they’re new establishment, like the Tribune remain the main sources of news. Between newsletters for political insiders like The Quorum Report, whose electronic presence is blasting out emails to its loyal subscribers, and the award-winning Texas Monthly magazine professional journalists (insomuch as they’re paid for producing content) remain the dominant information sources.
“In other states, I see them fighting paper to paper in a way that doesn’t reflect a cohesive ecosystem,” says Stanford, who is based in Austin but works in several Southern and Midwestern states.
“They don’t have the community of news we have here. We all seem to come together over The Texas Tribune, even the competitors. They’re not competing as much as they’re each doing what they do best. It’s more interesting, it’s a more vibrant news culture now. There’s more community because there’s less duplication of effort.”
via A Lively Political Press In A State Where Everything’s Bigger.
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