Tue April 2, 2013 11:41 am
Texas Monthly Nominated for Four National Magazine Awards
By Jake Silverstein

Yesterday brought news that Texas Monthly has been nominated for four National Magazine Awards. The NMAs, as they are known, are handed out by the American Society of Magazine Editors, and they’re like the Pulitzers or the Oscars of the magazine industry. Needless to say, we’re thrilled. And particularly because the nominations honor some of the truly great, serious, longform journalism that we published last year: not only did we receive a General Excellence nomination, but we were recognized in the categories of Reporting ("honors reporting excellence as exemplified by one article or a series of articles"), Feature Writing ("honors original, stylish storytelling"), and Public Interest ("honors magazine journalism that illuminates issues of public importance"). I couldn’t be more proud of this staff, truly among the most talented, dedicated, hard-working folks in the business.

Executive Editor Pamela Colloff scored two nominations this year, a feat few writers ever accomplish. She was recognized in Reporting for her masterful January 2012 story about the problems surrounding the conviction of Hannah Overton, a Corpus Christi woman sent to prison for murdering her foster child. (Overton, whose guilt has been seriously questioned, remains in prison; read Pam’s follow-up coverage here and here.) And Pam is also a finalist in Feature Writing for her epic two-part story about the Michael Morton case, “The Innocent Man.” As loyal readers know, the Morton story, serialized over our November and December issues, is the longest story Texas Monthly has ever published, clocking in at 28,000 words. For most writers, this would have been enough, but Pam—who so richly deserves her office nickname of “Teancious P”—didn’t stop. She has continued to cover the story for texasmonthly.com as it worked its way through a court of inquiry, in January, and a riveting murder trial that concluded last week (and which she’ll be writing about for the June issue of the magazine; stay tuned). All of her Morton coverage can be found here. And if you’d like to read “The Innocent Man” on your tablet, you can download a beautifully designed version here. (And if you really want to geek out on this piece, read Pam’s annotation of it for Harvard’s Nieman Storyboard project here.)

I mentioned above that few writers ever receive two nominations in a single year, but Pam is the third Texas Monthly staff writers to have accomplished this. In 1997 executive editor Skip Hollandsworth was nominated twice, and the year before executive editor Mimi Swartz was as well. Mimi won that year, in the Public Interest category, for a story about health insurance companies. And she’s back this year, with another Public Interest nomination for her tirelessly tough and honest examination of the status of women’s health issues in Texas in the aftermath of the 2011 legislative session, "Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives." That story was on the cover last August, which is a pretty clear indication of how important we thought it was. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t our best selling issue of the year, but once I’d read Mimi’s powerful reporting, I never once hesitated to give it our top billing.  

It’s no secret that these are tough times in the journalism business. As more and more magazines are forced to cut back on long, in-depth reporting (Pam spent at least six months on her Michael Morton story, an unheard-of amount of time for most reporters to dedicate to single story), it gives us great pride to be able to continue to do this sort of thing. There is truly nothing that can substitute for the insight and penetration that result from giving brilliant reporters like Pam and Mimi the time and space that it takes to delve deeply into subjects like this. And it is especially sweet to have their work recognized by our peers in the industry. Wish us luck at the May 2 awards presentation!

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Wed February 20, 2013 7:31 am
A Mighty Collaboration
By Jake Silverstein

Today we're publishing the fruit of our third collaboration to date with our pals at the Texas Tribune, the non-profit news organization that was founded in 2009 by our former editor, Evan Smith. In its few short years of existence, the Trib has emerged as one of the best outlets for politics and public policy reporting in the state, and one of the most interesting (and successful) non-profit news sites in the country. Amid the often depressing conversation about the future of the news media business, the Trib remains a bright spot, an example of how new business models can support innovative and important journalism that has real civic value.

We've watched with pride and excitement these past three and a half years as the Trib has established itself. And we've looked continuously for ways to work together to advance our mutual causes. The prime example of this, to date, has been our weekly collaborations on the Texas Report, a two-page section of state coverage that runs in the Texas edition of the New York Times on Fridays and Sundays. The Trib runs their politics and public policy reporting, and since 2011, Texas Monthly has provided the cultural coverage for this section (and by culture, we mean The Culture, as in stories about not just music, books, and movies but also Texas history, food, crime, art, celebrities, sports, and more). It's been a great match for all three media organizations.

But we haven't stopped there. Back in 2010 we published a story co-written by the Trib's energy and environment reporter, Kate Galbraith, on the history of the Texas wind power industry (a story that has now grown into an excellent forthcoming book to be published in April by the University of Texas Press). Last summer we ran another feature by Kate, about how the looming water shortages in Texas are being tackled by large industry. And shortly after that, we worked together to send Reeve Hamilton, the Trib's higher ed correspondent, to Qatar to report on the Texas A&M campus there. 

The Trib has made a business of collaborating. Making their content freely available to newspapers around the state is part of their model. So we're thrilled to find even more extensive ways of working together. As Evan wrote in a post on their site today:

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Fri February 15, 2013 1:42 pm
Sneak Peek at Our March Cover
By Jake Silverstein

This month found us in the rare position of going back to a cover subject we had treated just two issues ago. As most readers know, Lance Armstrong was our Bum Steer of the Year in January. But we made that decision and put together that issue well before he appeared on Oprah to confess to using performance enhancing drugs, which is to say, well before the biggest, most aggressively maintained lie in the history of sports was finally and definitively unmasked. And that’s why we decided to return to the story. Back in January, with Lance himself still vehemently denying the allegations of doping, we settled for poking fun at him with the Bum Steer issue. Now that the truth had come out, we wanted to tell the story.

From the beginning I was unsure he’d agree to talk to us. After all, we were submitting our request at the very moment that he was the butt of our jokes. And the writer working on the story, Michael Hall, had written tough stories about Lance over the years, including the first major article, back in 2001, to suggest that the doping allegations might have merit, and a more recent critical piece urging Lance to confess. Not exactly the sort of thing that wins you friends. But Lance surprised us by agreeing to sit for an interview. It was short but revealing, held at his house in West Austin. Mike found a man who seemed to go to great pains to show that he was doing just fine, who insisted that he was unconcerned with the “road to redemption.” In short, a predictably fierce competitor.

Just as revealing were the interviews with other players in the story—local supporters who felt betrayed, member of the Livestrong Foundation board, cyclists, and former friends. Mike wove all this together to tell a story about what happens next. And in particular: what happens next in Lance’s hometown, where he has lived for two decades, where his foundation is based, and where he was, until recently, the most famous and most venerated guy in town. Now what? How do you come back from something like this? And what does it feel like to be a pariah in your own hometown?

It’s an amazing story, told with Mike’s customary toughness and customary fairness, about the man who fell to earth.

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Fri February 8, 2013 1:12 pm
Commenting on texasmonthly.com
By Andrea Valdez

Recurring visitors to texasmonthly.com will notice that during the redesign we switched to a new commenting system called Disqus. We looked at a number of different systems, but we chose this one because it facilitates discussion between commenters, and it enables our readers to integrate commenting with their Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ accounts.  

Disqus also allows you comment anonymously—you may choose any screen name you want—but we require you to at least submit a functional email address in order to leave a comment. (Your email address will not be made public.)

There are some bells and whistles to our new system, but overall Disqus is pretty simple to use. And if the number of comments we've received since the site launched less than a week ago is any indication, it seems our readers would agree. 

That said, here's a quick tutorial on how to leave a comment:

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Thu January 31, 2013 10:25 pm
Welcome to the New National Home Page of Texas
By Jake Silverstein

Forty years ago, as the very first issue of Texas Monthly was being put together by Bill Broyles & Co., Life magazine folded. Though it would later resume publication (before finally folding again in 2007), and though it continues on today as a pretty amazing photo site, the coincidence of the legendary magazine’s demise and the new upstart’s birth served to make a point about the way the business was changing at the time. As Mike Levy, Texas Monthly’s founding publisher, wrote in his introductory note to readers:

The trend in magazine journalism away from big, mass circulation, general interest publications such as Life, Post, and Look towards the so-called ‘special market’ magazines, such as Psychology Today, New York, Sports Illustrated, and Road & Track. Americans are becoming more local in their perspectives, their interests are being narrowed and defined, and their magazine reading is being focused on what is going on in their own fields of interest and in their own backyards. Texas Monthly is a special market publication.

I’ve been thinking about this observation as we’ve been building this new website, which debuts today, on our fortieth birthday, at high noon low noon noon El Paso time ... (what's a few hours here or there?). Everyone knows that we’re living through another disruptive time in the journalism business. The web, and social media, and mobile devices, and everything else that you can squeeze under the umbrella of the Digital Age has upended the way readers read and the way journalists reach those readers and the way publishers make a business around the whole proposition. Texas Monthly’s print magazine has been an outlier to these trends. Our print product is a roaring, profitable enterprise that supports a large staff of exceptionally talented and experienced journalists doing exceptionally high-quality work. I’ll admit that this gives the magazine a sort of pleasantly old-fashioned feel at times: This is a place where, for a variety of reasons, the old way still works. But that doesn’t mean we don’t feel the pressure and see the opportunity presented by the way digital media are transforming our business. This new site is the biggest step we’ve yet taken to grab that opportunity.

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