Texas Tribune
| Type | Nonprofit |
|---|---|
| Format | Web |
| Founder(s) | John Thornton Evan Smith Ross Ramsey |
| Editor | Emily Ramshaw |
| Founded | 2009 |
| Headquarters | 823 Congress Austin, Texas USA |
| OCLC number | 465271495 |
| Website | www |
Coordinates: 30°16′14″N 97°44′30″W / 30.270540°N 97.741672°W
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit media organization in Texas in the United States. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it aims to promote civic engagement through original, explanatory journalism and public events. Its website and content in various delivery platforms serves as an alternative news source for Texas, with a goal of supplementing mainstream media sources.
The Texas Tribune, like Voice of San Diego and MinnPost before it, is part of a trend toward nonprofit journalism with an all-digital platform.
In addition to journalism posted online at its site, and in the pages and on the sites of its distribution partners, the Tribune hosts various events and conferences.
The foundation was created in the summer of 2009 by venture capitalist John Thornton and veteran journalists Evan Smith and Ross Ramsey. The idea for the organization originated with Thornton, who spent much of 2008 and 2009 promoting public interest in the concept of journalism as a public good. Thornton wrote, in July 2009:
In Micro 101, we learn that such "public goods" as clean air and national defense will not be produced in sufficient supply exclusively by market forces. Allow for the sake of argument that what I'll call "capital J" Journalism – journalism that takes on serious, complex issues and puts them in the context of how citizens interact with their government – is such a good.
Thornton and his wife, Julie, contributed the initial seed money to fund the organization's nascent operations and began to raise money from around the state and around the country from individuals, corporations, and foundations. He hired Smith, the longtime editor of Texas Monthly, to be CEO and editor-in-chief of the Trib, and the two recruited Ramsey, the longtime editor and owner of Texas Weekly, to be managing editor. Smith and Ramsey subsequently hired several well-known members of the Capitol press corps to join the team: Matt Stiles, of the Houston Chronicle; Emily Ramshaw, of the Dallas Morning News; Brandi Grissom, of the El Paso Times; Elise Hu, of KVUE-TV; and Reeve Hamilton, who covered the Texas Legislature for The Texas Observer. Morgan Smith, formerly of Slate, started writing for the Tribune in January 2010.
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