The 68-year-old progressive publication, which published Ronnie Dugger, Molly Ivins and Kaye Northcott, hit financial troubles and wasn’t able to broaden its audience, board members said.
Ronnie Dugger, founding editor of The Texas Observer, on June 8, 2012.Ivins, the late legendary political commentator and humorist, called it a “publication in a class by itself” in the 2004 book ““Texas, as has often been noted, is a peculiar place: it both deserves and needs an independent magazine devoted solely to its politics and other oddities,” she wrote.
In 1981, former Texas lawmaker A.R. “Babe” Schwartz peeled back the curtain on life in the Legislature — and after it. The next editor, Andrea Valdez, who rejoined the magazine in 2020, lasted only a couple of months before she was hired away by The 19th News, a nonprofit formed that year by Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora, the former editor in chief and audience director, respectively, of the Tribune. Another editor, Abby Johnston, joined Valdez in moving to The 19th News.
Ahtone said on Sunday night: “We could have seen this coming. Current leadership probably could have made a few calls to alleviate some of the financial pressures and staff problems that came after I left.” He said the reason he left was “because the board of directors wouldn’t deal with racism in the organization.”
From that point, the Observer became harder and harder to sustain, even though things seemed temporarily to brighten, according to the former board members. James Canup, a seasoned nonprofit fundraiser, joined as managing director in February 2022, and Arana, an editor who had worked at HuffPost and The American Prospect, was hired in April 2022. Frump stepped down from the board to oversee day-to-day business operations in July 2022.
Carol Ocker, who manages the couple’s philanthropic giving, did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
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