The Texas Observer is closing

March 27, 2023 6:19 AM

The Texas Observer, a liberal newsmagazine in a state that has grown increasingly hostile to its point of view since its founding in 1954, is closing. The news apparently came as a surprise to Observer staff, but the well-researched story in the Texas Tribune about the closure, like an obituary written before a person's death, suggests that perhaps it shouldn't have.
posted by adamrice (21 comments total)

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posted by gentlyepigrams at 7:00 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I spent a few minutes looking up some business I remember from a couple of years ago about the Observer having trouble keeping writers of color and a near wipeout of the staff a couple of years ago. Here's a piece about that fromwhen it happened by a journalism-on-jouranlism outlet.

(So yes, this has been coming. Still sad to see it happen.)
posted by gentlyepigrams at 7:32 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ouch. I used to work around the corner from their office, so have some nostalgic feelings for the Observer. Sorry to see it go, and Texas will certainly be the worse for it.

(I was never a regular reader. I tried at one point, but can only take so much Texas. )

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posted by mersen at 7:33 AM on March 27, 2023

I became aware of the Observer when they spun up a Mastodon instance to host accounts for their journalists and staff. They exemplified the best participation for a news organization on social media. I'm sad to see them shut down.

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posted by Surely This at 7:47 AM on March 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

A clue: "It doesn’t accept advertising."
posted by davidmsc at 8:01 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wondered about that, but TBH the ad-supported alternative newspapers of my acquaintance haven't been doing much better.
posted by Not A Thing at 8:03 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

There are several world-class journalists there; I personally worked with one of them. This is a loss and I hope they land somewhere else, and soon.

Also, this struck me:

Frump said the Observer was ultimately unable to adapt to the demands of a 24/7 news cycle and the proliferation of other sources of information about Texas, including Texas Monthly, a features magazine that just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization co-founded in 2009 by Evan Smith, a former editor of the Monthly.

So with this story, they're kinda writing the obituary of the rival publication they helped kill.... I mean, I get it, the Monthly couldn't really adapt, and new outlets are going to appear (and the Texas Tribune is a good outlet that a friend of mine helped found) but still, there's an irony or something here.
posted by martin q blank at 8:04 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't see anything being said about the archives of the magazine remaining at all online. I hope the whole run has been hoovered into the Wayback Machine or something, because it would be a shame to see all that go away.
posted by hippybear at 8:17 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

While genuinely important magazines and newspapers get sucked under by the capitalistic churn, people with good intentions keep throwing money into reinventing journalism, invariably wasting most of it.

About a decade ago, eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar donated 250 million dollars to found a thing called First Look Media, which ran a bunch of new webzines, most notably The Intercept, but a number of others.

I sometimes think about what the US would be like if he'd spent those 250 million dollars to fund 250 investigative journalism positions for ten years at already established progressive media organizations.
posted by Kattullus at 11:53 AM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

I just saw this from the current Editor-In-Chief:

The @TexasObserver is not like a Walmart that can just be shut down—esp. by a board president who resigned weeks ago and a divided board that has no journalists on it. It’s an idea in the minds of our readers, of the people who work here now and have worked here before. 1/x

Edit leadership offered countless times over the last few months to come together to fundraise & were met with radio silence. We’ve asked the board members who voted to quit to resign and allow those of us who want to see the legacy continue do the work. Will have more soon. 2/2

So we'll see.
posted by toastyk at 12:24 PM on March 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm a contributor to its demise. And I should be their core audience, but I let my subscription end a few years ago after I realized I wasn't reading it.

And I don't know if that means i'm oversaturated from other sources, or if I'm not nearly as actually politically involved and intersted as I like to think I am, or if it's just that when it comes down to it I just don't support investigative journalism as much as I think I do or should.

You'd think it'd be worth a few bucks a year even if I never read a single issue, and yet I didn't do it.

I'm clearly part of the problem here, but I don't know what the solution is.

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posted by sotonohito at 1:44 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

I've had a dead-tree subscription since college, but I didn't read it much anymore. I'd barely cracked the March/April issue that came a couple weeks ago, and now I guess that'll be the last one. They were still putting out important, well-researched, well-written journalism, but if I'm honest a lot of it was no damn fun to read. I always felt like they never quite figured out what they should be after Molly Ivins died in 2007.
posted by Tuba Toothpaste at 3:48 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I got an email this evening from the Observer's editor-in-chief, directing my attention to a GoFundMe to either (a) keep the Observer running after March 31st, or (b) distribute to the staff for their expenses.

sotonohito, I'm also part of the problem. I stopped contributing to the Observer because I never read it, despite thinking I ought to. Maybe the problem is that people who want to read about liberal politics, and people who want to read a lot about Texas mostly aren't the same people anymore?
posted by mersen at 7:19 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Reading my early comment this morning, dayum, I really am sick. Department of redundancy department.

Among other things I do, I write a regular weekly post for a friend's political blog on things happening in North Texas (he's based in Houston and we were in the same alumni social circles, still are). One of the things I thought about this morning after I logged off from posting here was that I hoped the Observer, if it really does go under, doesn't get sold off and turned into "pink slime" like the Dallas Express, a storied Black local newspaper whose name has been bought to serve as a right-wing local propaganda outlet. The story I linked was, of course, from the Texas Observer.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:04 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, Crowder gets offered 5$M annual salary from Shapiro but he thinks it is not enough. Propaganda outfits are awash in money.
posted by nofundy at 5:24 AM on March 28, 2023

Let's not write the obituary yet. They raised $150k in less than 24 hours.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:26 AM on March 28, 2023

Here's an insider-ish perspective on the Observer's woes.
posted by adamrice at 12:16 PM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

Texas Observer journalists raise $270,000 in bid to save publication

And here’s something interesting:

Among the unexpected sources of support for the magazine was the “fediverse” – the collection of decentralized Mastodon servers that soared in popularity following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Many comments on the GoFundMe page mention that the donors learned about the Observer through Mastodon – where the Texas Observer was one of the first journalistic outlets to set up its own server, Canup said.

For a publication with an aging readership and donor base, that’s another glimmer of hope.

“The generational passing of the baton may actually be happening through Mastodon,” Canup said.
posted by Artw at 6:36 PM on March 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

WE DID IT, Y’ALL! TEXAS OBSERVER WILL REMAIN OPEN!
posted by Artw at 6:46 PM on March 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Really pleased by this news. Now I need to follow up by subscribing.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:50 AM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a progressive, a former journalist, and forever fan of Molly Ivins, this makes me happy.
posted by lhauser at 7:08 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]