Molly Ivins
“The newspaper business? I don’t mind being in a dying industry, but it really pisses me off to be in one that’s committing suicide.”
“The newspaper business? I don’t mind being in a dying industry, but it really pisses me off to be in one that’s committing suicide.”
“People speak nostalgically about family newspapers. For every decent one, there were literally hundreds of embarrassingly bad ones.”
“Nobody doing what I’m doing is important anymore. Not in the way Winchell, Kilgallen, Hedda, and Louella were important.”
Senior editor Gary Cartwright, who wrote this month’s cover story, talks about getting access to retiring CBS News anchorman Dan Rather and the changing face of journalism.
“My hope has always been, for all my flaws and weaknesses, that people will say this: ‘He wanted to be a reporter and he is.’ I think they know that I love this country.” And other reflections on retirement from the broadcast-news icon turned right-wing punching bag.
“War is always a great reinforcer of secrecy, but a war on terror is the most insidious threat to opennessyou can always claim, without having to explain why, that something can't be public.”
What Walter Cronkite really thinks about cable TV shoutfests, the length of network newscasts, and (ahem) Jayson Blair.
This was the summer of George W. Bush's discontent, when sixteen specious words in the State of the Union address threw the White House into disarray. Can his 32-year-old mediameister, Dan Bartlett, get the message and the messenger back on track?
Dan Winters, who shot this month's photo essay, "Cuts Above," discusses finding the right piece of meat.
Misty Keasler talks about her young photography career and the intense images she captures, including this month's photos of the present-day Branch Davidian compound.
The most promising young fiction writer in Texas is Oscar Casares, whose tales of life in Brownsville have put him and his hometown on the literary map.
Not too long ago the photography collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston was nonexistent. But thanks to curator Anne Wilkes Tucker, it is now considered one of America's best. Here, she discusses her career, photography and being a woman in the field.
Hilary Duff, star of the breakout Disney Channel program Lizzie McGuire, is, at 15, already a legitimate phenomenon. In addition to her acting, which has spanned stage and screen, Duff's single "I Can't Wait" from the Lizzie McGuire soundtrack went gold this year.
From Ann on a Harley to Anna Nicole on a Bum Steer binge, we present our fifty favorite Texas Monthly issues with a female face.
Losing your breasts but keeping your dignity.
In the June 1991 issue, in an article called “Voices From the Dark,” I told the story of Dawn, my mother-in-law. It was an account of her brief career as a singer in Hollywood in the late forties, how schizophrenia had brought that career to a tragic end, and how
Tuning in to Shaggy.
The former editor of the Daily Texan and the Texas Observer was a good ol’ boy, a haunted soul, and my greathearted friend. A remembrance.
How Lady Bird Johnson became the first lady of Texas radio.
What do gossipeuse Liz Smith, politico Paul Begala, and Hollywood hotshot Robert Rodriguez have in common? They all worked—and networked—at the hundred-year-old Daily Texan.
London calling.
Charlie Rose blooms in Dallas–Fort Worth.
Like the coffee and pie in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, the Arlington-based fanzine Wrapped in Plastic is damn fine.
The world’s largest online love line.
Peter Jennings. Liz Smith. Barbara Walters. Joe Armstrong? You may not know the name, but New York publishing’s most famous ex-Abilenian is at home among the stars—and is a star in his own right.
David HalberstamMy father was stationed in El Paso at Biggs Field, which would later become a huge air base. You could see all these planes that were lined up, the bombers that were going to be used. I loved El Paso; it was so different from growing up in New
The New York Times takes on Texas—again.
Folk singer Nanci Griffith thinks the Texas media have been mistreating her. The way she’s fighting back guarantees her trouble with the press isn’t going away.
Luann Williams, the editor and publisher of Pop Culture Press, isn’t the type who waits for opportunity to knock. “In the mid-eighties I was working at a Memphis record store and loved music magazines,” says the thirtysomething Tennessee native. “I was looking at a couple, and I thought, ‘You know,
Co-anchor aweigh.
The host with the most.
Game Boy.
Read all about her.
The media muff George W. Bush’s name.
BILL WITTLIFF IS A RENAISSANCE hombre. An author, a publisher, a film producer, and an arts patron, the longtime Austinite is best known for his screenplays, including The Black Stallion, Raggedy Man, Legends of the Fall, and Lonesome Dove; his adaptation of the latter revived both the miniseries and the
Crime in Mexico hits home.
After years of attacking members of the Dallas City Council, journalist Laura Miller wants to be one.
The first film Texas Monthly deputy editor Evan Smith ever saw was A Boy Named Charlie Brown. That was in 1969, when he was only three. But Snoopy, Lucy, and the gang must have had a potent effect because film has been a steady and powerful presence in Smith’s
BEFORE SHE BEGAN putting together finely detailed service pieces for magazines like this one, Suzy Banks was occupied with another kind of construction. “I graduated from college in 1981 with a useless degree in film, but I didn’t want to leave Texas,” says the 39-year-old, who lives in Dripping
Texas Primer Who’s been on our cover the most times? Ross is boss.
When you listen to Jim Hightower’s talk radio show, that’s the question you inevitably ask—about him, the medium, and Texas liberalism.
Why are small-town Texas newspapers thriving? Because unlike big-city dailies, they know their readers, and they give them what they want.
With increasing frequency, radio stations in Texas are changing hands—and aggressive Texas entrepreneurs are finally making waves.
MY MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER, Grandma Page, was up at three-thirty or four o’clock in the morning to bake and churn and get ready for the cotton fields on our family farm in Bloomington. At night, after all the cooking and sewing, there was energy left for her reading. “Come, Danny, I’ll
She’s got a secret.
The name of the gamer.
Growing up in Houston, J. C. Herz spent much of her time defending the city from incoming ballistic missiles. She accomplished this while sitting in front of her family’s television and playing Missile Command—just one of the many video games lovingly described in her second book, Joystick Nation (Little, Brown;
A cryptic puzzle you’ll utter no cross words about.
What in the world can make learning fun? Would you believe—the National Geographic Society? When the staid Washington, D.C., institution wanted to turn the database of questions from its National Geography Bee into a computer game that would appeal to parents and kids alike, it turned to Austin’s Human Code,
While she was still in high school, Uma Pemmaraju persuaded the editors of the San Antonio Express-News to let her write the weekly fishing report—even though she was, so to speak, out to sea on the subject. “I knew nothing about fishing,” she says. “I was basically calling around different