Trouble at Texas Monthly

I love TM.
If I had a writing dream job, working for TM would be it.
Fantastic stuff.

 

A couple of my favorites, discovered through Longform:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/candy/

https://features.texasmonthly.com/editorial/the-reckoning/

https://features.texasmonthly.com/editorial/still-life/

 

I always thought TM was one of those titles that subscribed to the Esquire model (or whomever started it). You'd get some lighter stuff, best BBQ and a little story about a band or whatever, but every issue would have at least one very good feature. And then three or four times a year, someone like Pamela Colloff or Skip Hollandsworth or Katy Vine would drop a major piece—an essential piece that would knock you on your ass. Like, a story that would just wreck you.

For me, that's the contract that a monthly should make with its readers. Every month we'll give you something good, and every now and then, we'll give you something great. I wish TM's new ownership would recognize the value of that kind of commitment to journalism. This is a larger problem in the industry—the ASMEs have four categories for digital and online shit, and two for long stories. It's so dumb.

If magazines don't give you meat, then what's the point of them? Fuck the Internet and fuck the quick hit. Here is a beautiful little book of substance, made with care and delivered to your door every month. I think people are starving for that now. That's what TM was, and it's what it should be.

 

That is absolutely right.

But that sort of incremental, long-horizon thinking isn't necessarily the hallmark of private equity money.

 

Texas Monthly used to be a premiere magazine with great journalism and stories

 

In the early '80s, he came out with a book entitled Confessions of a Washed-Up Sportswriter. It's basically a compilation of essays he wrote for Texas Monthly, and includes some really great stories about sportswriting and newspapers from his days in the biz in the wild-and-wooly days in DFW. Really an entertaining read. In his final years, he seemed to be a bitter guy who had to fight some personal demons, but in his prime, he was as good -- and wild -- as it got.

 

Correctly, oh, woe is I.