- The prognosticators of doom for traditional newspapers are everywhere, and it's hard to argue with 'em.

But for more than a decade, today's guest has been part of a new model of nonprofit journalism at "The Texas Tribune."

He's Matthew Watkins, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(bright music) (bright music slows) Hello, and welcome to a "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Matthew Watkins, a longtime Texas journalist who is now editor-in-chief of "The Texas Tribune."

He joins us today from Austin, Texas.

Matthew, thank you so much for being with us.

- Jim, Wayne, happy to be here.

- You know, we've been big fans of the work that "The Texas Tribune" has been doing for a number of years, and so we're really excited to talk to you.

For those in our audience who maybe don't know what the Tribune is, do you wanna give us just a quick overview?

- Yeah, absolutely.

We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan news site devoted to the story of Texas government, Texas politics, and its impact on the lives of Texans.

We are one of the earliest nonprofit news sites in this sort of new wave, and really devoted to the idea that, you know, people need to understand what's happening in their name in the halls of power in the state of Texas, that a lot of the attention on state government has kind of faded as as media, you know, jobs have declined, and that we're there to help fill that gap and really fill what we believe is a public good in terms of giving people good, reliable, honest, nuanced, fair information about, you know, what's happening with their government.

- You know, Austin is one of my favorite cities.

It's a big city.

It's got the University of Texas.

It's got the seat of the Texas government.

It's got a thriving business community.

Why was a digital-first effort like "The Texas Tribune" even necessary in the first place?

- Well, because when we started 16 years ago, we were seeing that the number of people covering the Capitol those days was really in the decline.

You know, the state government is determining, you know, what's going on in your kids' schools, what's happening with the universities, the roads you drive on, the healthcare you receive.

It's really touching every single aspect of people's lives.

But national politics get so much more attention.

And you were seeing kind of the current legacy media outlets in the state and elsewhere in the country have to make really hard decisions around their budgets.

And one of the first places they were cutting was that State House reporting.

And so we're really big believers that you need journalists, you need reporters there, you know, understanding what's happening, holding leaders accountable, explaining the decisions that are being made, and lifting up the important topics that need the attention of those state leaders.

And we felt like digital nonprofit was the way to do that, because really, there had been a market failure in news, and the old ways of doing it weren't really covering it.

- So, Matthew, you're digital first.

Tell us what that means exactly, please.

- So we publish our work texastribune.org, you know, all our stories there.

We do not have a print component.

That being said, we also give away all of our work for free to every news outlet in the state and elsewhere.

Anyone who wants to take one of our stories and put it in their print newspaper or put it on their evening news broadcast or put it on their website is able to do that for free.

But it, you know, essentially means, digital first means, you know, we're writing for the way people get their information these days, right, not tied to any other models that, you know, might be declining or changing, really trying to think first and foremost about how information travels through the world today, and how can we try to make sure that good information is getting out there and reaching people in those ways.

- So do you track how other news outlets, you mentioned TV, newspapers, do you track how much or how often they use your content?

Obviously, they do to some extent.

But give us an idea of how many or how often that happens.

- Yeah, so last year, we had over 900 stories run on the front pages of newspapers across the state.

- [Wayne] Wow.

- The smaller papers in particular use us a ton.

We are essentially their Austin bureau.

But the big papers, too, run our stuff very frequently.

Other things are harder to track, basically, because anyone can go on our site, as long as they don't change the content of the story, copy our text, and put it on their website.

So there are other things that are happening, other people that are approaching our stuff that we don't even know about, but we feel it in the impact.

We feel it about, you know, the way people are engaging with their state government.

It feels like it has really grown and increased over the last decades or so in Texas.

And we believe that we've played a big role in that.

- So if you go to your website, you see that you have reporters, we see that you have reporters who live and work in Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, Lubbock, Lufkin, bunch of other cities, also Washington, DC.

How are you able to have that incredibly broad coverage?

I guess I'm talking in terms of the financing here.

And you touched on that before, but give us a little bit more about that.

That's a large number of people all around Texas and in Washington, right, and it's- - Right, yeah, so- - Of course, it makes your content great.

But anyway, how do you finance that?

- That's right, yeah, so we're big believers in revenue diversity, right?

We wanna get money from a lot of different places.

We don't wanna be too reliant on one person or one model, right?

One person, because we don't wanna live in fear that we're gonna upset that person and, you know, lose our funding.

And then one model, because the way information travels is changing so rapidly that we don't wanna be too dependent on anything.

And so we get money from display advertising.

We're fortunate that, you know, state lawmakers and other very influential people very closely read our work, and that there are advertisers who want to get their message out in front of them, and they buy ads on our website and newsletters and other places like that.

We have membership.

We have, you know, aiming to collect $2 million in small dollar donations from readers this year, most of them from within Texas, but we've actually have members in every single state across the country, people who believe in the value of journalism and wanna support it.

Then we go, you know, major donors.

People who want to invest in their state, the civic health of their state, will donate to us, foundations as well.

And we also do events.

We do, I actually did an event this morning interviewing a candidate for a state comptroller that people pay to sponsor.

We also have an annual festival in Downtown Austin every year that brings in state officials but also national politicians.

We've had people like Hillary Clinton, Glenn Youngkin, Nancy Pelosi come speak at that.

That has become a pretty big event and has become a pretty big revenue generator for us as well.

- You know, Matthew, that diversity of revenue sources is really sort of novel.

So your website is remarkable because it's also super transparent about who your donors are and who your supporters are.

But the thing that jumped out at me, having looked at a lot of nonprofit books, is that you make about a million dollars from the types of sources that traditional legacy media makes revenue from.

There, I'm thinking about subscriptions and advertisers.

But you raised about $14.5 million in 2024, the last year that you had those books online for, from foundations, from corporations giving sponsorship, and from big charitable gifts.

How do you make sure that an important donor does not shape the editorial coverage that "The Tribune" is providing on an issue?

- It's a great question.

I would say, first and foremost, diversity is key there, right?

Like, we try to raise money from people from all different sides of particular issues, from all different political persuasions, so that we don't feel a sort of, like, subconscious pull or push in a certain direction ideologically.

That's really important to us to try to... You know, you're a Republican, you're a Independent, you're a Democrat, like, we want your money, and we want you to support us not because we're going to promote your ideological agenda but because you believe that in order for democracy to function, people need to understand the facts, understand what's going on, and then make their decisions based on that.

And we're trying to give kind of the raw goods in order to help people make those decisions.

In addition to that, we disclose, right, we give transparency.

If someone has given money to us that we're citing in a story, we're going to tell you at the bottom of that story, and you can make a decision for yourself whether or not you're going to trust that or not.

We think you should.

Money has always influenced politics.

You know, I've worked at newspapers, and there were big advertisers who sometimes would get upset about the stories that we write.

That still happens, but we're going to disclose it, and we're gonna let you decide yourself whether you feel like we're being honest or telling the truth in that way.

- I mean, so I say this in a real positive way, there's an idealism in the way that you approach that transparency and that recognition.

But I gotta tell ya, you've opened up resources that, if you were operating on a million dollars a year from advertising and subscriptions, you could not do the kind of in-depth coverage, I'm assuming, that you're able to do now.

- That's right, there's, you know, again, a market failure in news, right?

The newspapers used to get all kinds of money from sources that really actually weren't that tied to the journalism they were doing, you know.

It was classified ads, it was movie listings, all different kind, you know, department store sales and all that.

You know, technology has changed that and made those sources of revenue unavailable anymore.

But we believe that the journalism that that money was supporting is really important.

And in the same way that people support museums and the ballet and other areas to kind of promote the civic life of their communities, we feel that people should also support journalism in that same way, and I think we've been fortunate to find that people agree with that and have been willing to do so.

- So when I was new to Rhode Island, my friend here, Wayne, brought me to "The Providence Journal," and we, to walk me through the cavernous newsroom where all the reporters had desks, and there was an energy and a vibrancy there.

And across the hall was an even larger room with all the folks selling advertising, which was something that I had not appreciated until I saw it with my own eyes.

- Mm-hmm.

- Is it the same sort of dynamic now; you've got journalists that are reporting, and you've got a big army of fundraisers out there raising the revenues instead of selling advertising?

- Yeah, I would call it a small but mighty- (Jim and Wayne laughing) You know, we have our team.

You know, we still have that separation, right?

Like in those newsrooms, there was a reason those two groups were in different rooms, right?

Because you didn't want the work of one to be influencing the other.

And we still feel that way, too.

But we have a small team, you know, that's selling ads to sponsors.

We have a small team that's going out and fundraising.

We have a small team that's focused on development and working with foundations, and they are, you know, working every day to try to raise that money.

One of the great things about being a nonprofit is that there is complete agreement in the mission and what we're trying to do.

So even the folks who aren't, you know, capital J Journalists are really bought into that mission and really trying to, you know, give our newsroom all the resources we can have to seek out the truth and to tell the truth to our readers.

- So, Matthew, we're taping this episode before the Texas primary runoffs on May 26th, One of Texas' elections, one of the Texas elections that's receiving national attention is the GOP primary for the US Senate seat between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Why was Senator Cornyn vulnerable?

- So Senator Cornyn, a very long-serving US senator from Texas, he has been in Washington for a very long time, climbed the ranks of leadership in the Senate over his career and has been a very influential senator for the state and really across the country.

But, you know, being around for a long time in politics can have its, can create some vulnerabilities these days.

And, you know, he predates the Trump movement, the MAGA movement.

And I think there are a lot of people in Texas, a lot of Republicans who view him with a little bit of skepticism.

They view him more along the lines of the sort of George Bush wing of the party.

Cornyn has, you know, been very supportive of Trump, both vocally and with his votes.

If you look at his record, he's been very much aligned with him.

But there is a wing of the party who has been very skeptical of him for a very long time.

Ken Paxton, our attorney general, represents that wing.

And that is what has led to a situation where Cornyn, you know, faced such a competitive primary despite being a long-time incumbent.

- Yeah, so the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has expressed, I think, a healthy amount of skepticism about mail-in voting and absentee voting.

I'm curious, those are both legal in Texas, how has his opposition to those practices played in Texas?

- Yeah, so one thing, they are legal.

They are more restrictive than some other states, right?

So in order to do a mail-in ballot, you either have to be traveling during the election, or you have to be over the age of 65, or you have to have some kind of, like, health reason in order to vote.

That's a lot of people, you know.

A lot of people in Texas over 65 vote, right?

It's the most active part of the electorate.

We have seen, since that skepticism has raised, a little bit of shift in habits.

Republicans in the state are less likely to vote by mail than they used to be.

Instead, they show up at the polls, early voting, and maybe even more specifically in election day.

Democrats, you haven't seen that shift away.

And so those mail-in ballots that are counted tend to lean a little bit more Democratically than Republican.

That didn't always used to be the case.

But, you know, what we have seen is that that shift hasn't necessarily affected turnout, right, that people are still voting, maybe just choosing different ways to vote.

- So one of the big national issues this year has been enforcement activity by ICE.

- Yes.

- Curious to know how some of the cities in Texas, and it's a very diverse state, but some of the cities like Austin, Houston, and so forth fare.

Can you give us an overview of that?

- Yeah, absolutely, so, you know, the political dynamic in Texas is that the cities tend to lean liberal, and the suburbs a little bit more down the middle, and the rural areas deep, deep red.

So there's always been a lot of skepticism of, you know, Trump's immigration actions in the cities and then a lot of pushback by the state government to try to stop that.

So many cities in Texas declare themselves sanctuary cities, areas to protect migrants.

The state passed a law saying they cannot do that.

Many cities recently kind of tried to limit how their police departments could cooperate with ICE.

And very recently, Governor Abbott kind of came out and said, no, that's not okay; you need to change those policies, or we're going to withhold, you know, tens of millions of dollars in state funds from your law enforcement agencies to prevent you from doing that.

So there's very much been this kind of push and pull, where the city leaders face intense pressure, oftentimes from their constituents, to kind of resist ICE and resist Trump in these areas, and intense pressure from the state, and all of the power that the state has, to cooperate.

They've been trying to strike that balance.

Lately, they've been kind of pulled back more in the direction of cooperating with ICE due to the kind of, the levers that the state has in order to enforce that.

- So in the big cities, have there been demonstrations, No Kings rallies?

What's been happening on the ground there?

- Yes, absolutely.

Austin in particular has had massive turnout.

But Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, even some of the smaller cities, where maybe Trump is more popular, you've seen a lot of that resistance.

I mean, the other thing you've seen is Trump's popularity has really declined.

He won by a surprisingly large margin in Texas in the most recent election.

He has seen his support erode, particularly among Hispanic voters in Texas.

A lot of people point to the immigration enforcement as a reason for that.

And a lot of people point to that as a reason why, you know, someone like James Talarico, our Democratic nominee for Senate, is being viewed possibly someone who could be competitive in the general election, and how, you know, this might be a rough year for Republicans in Texas electorally.

- Yeah, Matthew, Texas Republicans were at the forefront of the effort a year ago to redraw congressional district boundaries, even outside the cycle of a traditional 10-year census.

There are some who say that they've actually had the perverse effect of making some of those districts more competitive.

Do you think that analysis bears out?

- Well, I think it is very, very, very likely that the Republicans will gain seats from Texas in Congress.

I think the question is, will they gain the five seats that they drew to gain?

And that, to me, is a big question.

Two of those seats are along the US-Mexico border, where Trump really outperformed expectations and past history in the most recent presidential election.

As I mentioned, some of that popularity has really declined.

And I think there are a lot of people who think that those two border seats might still be held by Democrats at the end of this election.

There's another seat held by Tony Gonzales, a member of Congress who resigned from office due to a scandal related to a relationship with a staffer, Democrats trying to hold onto that, win that seat as well.

There is this idea of maybe it's more likely that they'll gain three seats or even two seats than they will gain five, but the idea that they will, that Republicans will gain seats seems, I think, a pretty strong likelihood.

It's just a matter of how many.

- So, Matthew, in addition to the lack of political coverage, one of the casualties of the demise of legacy newspapers has been less investigative reporting, which of course requires a great commitment of time and resource and folks on the ground doing the work.

"Texas Tribune," however, has a vigorous investigative function.

Talk about why that's important, and talk about why that's important, please.

(Jim and Wayne chuckling) - Yeah, absolutely.

So we have basically seven investigative reporters who work with "The Tribune."

- Wow.

- Part of that is a team with the national investigative outlet "ProPublica."

They're jointly members of "The Tribune" and "ProPublica" newsroom and do investigations all over the state.

And then we have our own sort of "Tribune-only" investigative reporters as well.

I mean, we're big believers that, you know, the government, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, makes mistakes, does the wrong thing.

And, you know, the way that our democracy accounts for that is, you know, through the ballot, right?

And if there is no one, like, raising up those concerns, raising up those mistakes, there will be less incentive to stop that or change habits.

And so, you know, we really take seriously our role as watchdogs of government, of power in Texas.

And we want to, you know, we always say sunlight is the best disinfectant.

It's not the only role we play.

We also wanna explain, you know, what's driving these politicians and where they stand on the issues, and, you know, what are the positive things happening, and all of that, but investigative reporting, it's, as you mentioned, very expensive, it's time consuming, it's one of those things that the market failure in news really erased.

And we take it very seriously that we wanna kind of continue to preserve that and promote that going forward.

- You know, it almost confirms, I've long had the suspicion, as I've watched newspapers sort of atrophy and die, or at least slip into comas, that it's a lot to do with the content that winds up filling column inches, as it were, or websites now.

If there's not good content, you're gonna lose your audience.

- Right, right.

Yeah, I think one of the mistakes that many newspapers made was cutting, you know, some of the most important work that they do, right?

They have, you know, had to raise prices because advertising has gone away, while at the same time reducing the size of their newsrooms, which makes, you know, the product worse.

I wanna be clear, like, there's still really great journalism being done by newspapers across the country, and particularly in Texas.

We partner with those newspapers all the time and, you know, want them to survive and thrive.

But just the fact is, is if you cut in half, or maybe more than half, the number of journalists out there, the quality of the work is gonna go down.

And we're trying to help be part of the solution to that problem.

- How do you attract young readers, many of whom these days do not look to a site like yours or certainly to a newspaper?

They might get their news through social media.

But how do you attract that audience?

And I'm assuming you do have younger people in your audience.

- Yes, yes, for sure.

So, you know, it's true that people's readership habits have changed.

I always talk about like, you know, you look at the old pictures of, you know, people riding the subway in the, you know, first half of the last century, right, and everyone's holding up a newspaper.

And now if you took a picture in the subway today, you'd see everyone looking at their phone, right?

- Yeah.

- But they're not just looking at their phone, reading the news, right?

They're watching Netflix or playing, you know, "Candy Crush" or all different types of things, right?

- Or a TikTok.

(laughs) - And there's just so much competing for people's attention, right?

No one... It's hard to be bored now, right?

Because there's so much information and content flying at you.

And so we try to be aware of that and operate in the world as it really exists, not the world that we wish existed going forward.

And that means, you know, making short-form videos, making TikToks, posting on Instagram, posting in places where people are spending their time, and hoping that our journalism and the work, the values that we put into our journalism reaches them where they are, not just, you know, kind of scolding them, shaking our fingers at them and saying, you know, you need to come to us in order to be a good citizen.

- Matthew, we've got about a minute and a half left here.

I wonder, does "The Texas Tribune" use AI in the newsroom?

- So yes, we do in different ways, right?

For instance, AI can be used for transcription.

And now, it used to take an hour to transcribe your interview, and now it takes, you know, 30 seconds, right?

What we don't do is replace the work of journalists with AI.

We don't create AI photos, you know, to run on our stories.

But AI is a very powerful tool that can help people work more efficiently.

It can help them analyze big datasets.

It can help them do a lot of different things faster that can make our journalists more efficient and allow them, the humans, to produce more journalism.

And we think that's really valuable.

And we're still looking for ways to sort of experiment with that and leverage that power.

- Is the future of journalism nonprofit?

- I think nonprofit is a big part of the future for sure, because of that market failure we described.

I think people, we need to kind of build the habit, people to understand the value of journalism, why it matters, why it's important to the civic health, and understand that even if, you know, they're not writing every story the way you want them to write, that the fact that those people exist will make your communities better.

And the more that we can do that, the better off our communities will be.

- Matthew Watkins, it's "The Texas Tribune," and folks can check that out texastribune.org.

That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit salve.edu/pellcenter, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

And we wanna thank you, too, for spending some time with us this week.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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