Friday, January 21, 2022

A new media shooter coming out


Unlike Chuckles, I don't necessarily see this as good news.


Let's see the scorecard for the players:

A search committee will look for an editor-in-chief and CEO. That committee will include the following people: Ann Stern, president and CEO, Houston Endowment; Dr. Anne Chao, manager of the Houston Asian American Archive; Rice University's Armando Perez, executive vice president H-E-N Houston, chairman, United Way Greater Houston; Jeff Cohen, executive vice president, Arnold Ventures; Reginald DesRosches, Howard R. Hughes provost and president-elect, Rice University; and Rich Kinder, chairman, Kinder Foundation and executive chairman, Kinder Morgan Inc.

John Arnold (together with his wife Linda) is the local billionaire who made his first fortune with Enron, getting out early before the implosion.  He's a Libertarian.  Houston Endowment sold the Chronicle to Hearst in 1986; they were started by Jesse Jones.  The Knight Foundation was born out of a once-formidable newspaper outfit, and the American Journalism Project has its own list of benefactors, with quite a bit of overlap with the above.  Two names stood out to me: John Thornton, the venture capitalist who birthed the Texas Tribune with Evan Smith; and Cohen, the former editor of the Chronicle.  I'll let Amal Ahmed finish.


And my favorite journalist at the Chron weighed in.


I subscribe to the Axios newsletter for Dallas; it's barely tolerable.  I had to stop the Austin newsletter, as it was not.  The TexTrib has a few problems, but paying their staff and reporting on the Texas political duopoly isn't among them.  The Chronic catches a lot of flak from the conservatives in town for 'librul bias', so I would guess those folks are applauding this announcement.

AJP has already funded many similar efforts, including El Paso Matters.  Poynter spoke to Thornton and co-founder Elizabeth Green two years ago about their mission.

Several observations:

-- This really is an exciting time in online media in Texas.  Reform Austin is doing a bang-up job with Nick Anderson at the helm.  The Texas Signal has vastly improved with Fernando Ramirez's reporting, and for blue partisans Michelle Davis' Living Blue in Texas is a great resource.

-- Kuffner likes it because he thinks there'll be more local politics covered  ... that he can then cut and paste into his blog posts.  Amusing, because without a Chronicle subscription, about 75% of his blog doesn't exist.  Hell, I just hope they offer him a job that pays well enough that he can quit the oil company.  He can keep ignoring the corruption of local Democrats as long as they balance him by hiring some Republican who isn't a right wing freak.  Probably rules out Big Jolly, but the Houston Watch person might have a shot if he/she can diversify his/her anti-Kim Ogg content a bit.  (Not that Madam District Attorney hasn't earned it.)

-- Poor old Gadfly, the expert on everything, needs a better job than that POS newspaper in Sulphur Springs, but he hates Houston and all people and his life in general.

-- Cohen will probably find a place for some of the furloughed Chron folks like Evan Mintz and Laura Goldberg (the once-business editor and wife to my old former friend Neil Aquino).  In fact there are lots of good well-paying jobs suddenly available in Texas journalism.  That's a very good thing.

-- I have no interest.  None.  I'm retired.

-- Expect oil and gas money to flow like polluted fracking water into this venture.

It'll be a year before it gets off the ground, but today it smells like Michael Bloomberg's attempt to buy the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2020 by hiring every single Texas political rube off the street.  Here's a few of my suggestions for names:

-- The Big Greasy Times
-- The Bayou City Bugle
-- The Space City Star

What's your take?

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