Everything’s bigger in Texas, except when it’s not. The indie Texas Tribune is blazing the frontier of news, at least the future model of news. It’s a nonprofit, online-only organization that is heavy on talented writers, multimedia and, ahem, funding. The site went live about a week ago, attracting attention from NYT media master Aron Pilhofer to the well-connected Alan Mutter, and all this amid warnings from newspaper purist (and my personal hero) David Simon, creator of HBO’s The Wire and former Baltimore Sun city reporter :
In the newspaper industry, however, the fledgling efforts of new media to replicate the scope, competence, and consistency of a healthy daily paper have so far yielded little in the way of genuine competition. A blog here, a citizen journalist there, a news Web site getting under way in places where the newspaper is diminished—some of it is quite good, but none of it so far begins to achieve consistently what a vibrant newspaper, staffed with competent, paid beat reporters and editors, once offered. New-media entities are not yet able to truly cover—day after day—the society, culture, and politics of cities, states, and nations. And until new models emerge that are capable of paying reporters and editors to do such work—in effect becoming online newspapers with all the gravitas this implies—they are not going to get us anywhere close to professional journalism’s potential.
Thanks to Evan Smith, the Tribune’s editor-in-chief, who hand-crafted a team of news and multimedia vets, Simon should be appeased with at least message if not the medium.