Fifty years is a very long time within the lifetime of anybody or something. Only 6 % of marriages final that lengthy. Many well-known figures, from Jesus to Jimi Hendrix, didn’t attain the half-century mark, nor did as soon as well-known corporations Blockbuster and Compaq. So it’s with satisfaction, together with gratitude to our readers and advertisers, that Texas Monthly has revealed a special golden-anniversary issue, our 601st.
When my colleagues and I began planning for this event, we needed to focus much less on ourselves than on the fascinating state that we’ve been blessed to chronicle. Executive editor Mimi Swartz, a beloved, 33-year veteran of Texas Monthly, steered we study how varied Texas icons have modified and endured for the reason that journal’s beginning. We all preferred that concept, and deputy editor Jeff Salamon, a deft and affected person shepherd of massive initiatives, set about assigning almost sixty tales about characters, locations, and establishments starting from the Alamo and Southwest Airlines to Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Flaco Jiménez and the ageless Willie Nelson.
Among these icons, you’ll discover Texas Monthly itself. That’s becoming, as a result of ours is a really Texan story. It’s the story of a visionary younger Dallas entrepreneur with an audacious thought, who ignored the naysayers, borrowed start-up funding from his working-class immigrant dad and mom, enlisted different gifted younger Texans, launched his enterprise, persevered by way of setbacks, refused to compromise his requirements, and constructed one thing of lasting worth.
That entrepreneur was Michael R. Levy, then age 26, the son of a plumber who had immigrated from Poland. Mike was the primary in his household to attend faculty, the distinguished Wharton School on the University of Pennsylvania. While nonetheless a scholar, Mike freelanced as a journalist, and after commencement he bought adverts for Philadelphia journal. He went on to earn a level from the University of Texas School of Law. But he saved fascinated with his time in Philly. If that metropolis—and others, together with Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York—hosted magazines that coated the issues and passions of every place, why not launch an analogous journal for and about all of Texas?
As Mike started to debate the thought with veteran editors, many dismissively waved him away. The typical knowledge in publishing held that metropolis magazines flourished as a result of readers have been intently linked to the neighborhood the place they labored and performed. Few felt the identical approach about their state. But Mike knew Texas was completely different. It had stood as an impartial republic for almost a decade earlier than it joined the United States. Texans lived longer of their house state than did different Americans. They have been additionally extra more likely to attend a college inside the state, and, I’ve noticed, to satisfy a future partner there, to make associates from far-flung corners of Texas—and to spend the remainder of their lives fortunately driving for hours to go to these people on weekends and holidays. Texans took a powerful curiosity not solely of their hometowns however in goings-on all throughout the Lone Star State, together with its blood-sport politics and weird crimes, ingenious barbecue and taco joints, favourite swimming holes and honky-tonks, risk-defying wildcatters and different larger-than-life characters. Mike instructed me he got here to imagine that “God wanted there to be a magazine called Texas Monthly.” It seems that Texans needed that, too.
After interviewing scores of candidates, Mike selected as his founding editor William Broyles, then 27, a Houston native simply getting back from fight as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam. Bill had little expertise in journalism, however he knew and liked Texas and shared Mike’s imaginative and prescient for {a magazine} about it. He’s written a fine piece about the heady days main as much as Texas Monthly’s first concern, February 1973, and the publication’s early years. Like lots of our alumni, Bill went on to realize fame in different realms, together with as a screenwriter for 2 motion pictures starring Tom Hanks: Castaway and the Oscar-nominated Apollo 13. “The key to Texas Monthly’s success,” Bill instructed me, “was that Mike and I and our team weren’t part of the Texas publishing establishment, so we didn’t know that we couldn’t do what we went out and did.”
What they did was exceptional not solely journalistically—Texas Monthly has received a complete of fourteen National Magazine Awards, the Oscars of our business—but additionally commercially. Though they started within the enamel of the 1973–1975 recession, Mike and his enterprise crew steadily elevated the journal’s advert gross sales and circulation, because it grew to succeed in greater than two million Texans every month. Mike allowed his editors to function with out affect from advertisers. But he did insist that the journal keep a core group of workers writers (as an alternative of relying totally on freelancers, as many magazines did) and that it rent a crew of rigorous fact-checkers and replica editors—a rarity then and much more so as we speak. Mike bought the journal in 1998 and left its make use of in 2008, however he stays on our masthead as founder and writer emeritus, and his entrepreneurial spirit lives on.
We’ve additionally revealed a narrative about the evolution of Texas Monthly, penned by Stephen Harrigan, who started writing for the journal shortly after its founding. He continues to take action as we speak as one among our hottest contributors however is probably greatest generally known as writer of the authoritative historical past of Texas, Big Wonderful Thing, and of a number of acclaimed novels, together with The Gates of the Alamo and, most not too long ago, The Leopard Is Loose.
The aggressive panorama for journalistic organizations has been radically reworked lately, with many shedding workers or closing their doorways totally. Texas Monthly skilled comparable woes, particularly between the Great Recession’s begin, in 2007, and the tip of 2018. During that point, increasingly Americans who love nice nonfiction storytelling sought it not solely in printed magazines and books but additionally on web sites and in movies, podcasts, dwell occasions, and e-mail newsletters. In response, we’ve expanded to serve our viewers on every of these platforms and have optioned the rights to develop a number of dozen tales as Hollywood motion pictures and streaming collection. Texas Monthly is now on the quick checklist of U.S. publications that’s rising in viewers and income, with an editorial workers that has almost doubled since 2019.
During these previous three and a half years, we’ve been lucky to have as our proprietor Randa Duncan Williams, who has offered us the affected person capital required to develop and diversify our choices. Thanks to Randa’s investments and the exhausting work and creativity of our editorial and enterprise staffers, we’re on monitor to return to profitability inside a number of years and to maintain high quality storytelling about Texas for years to return.
A graduate of the University of Houston Law Center, Randa serves as chairman of Enterprise Products Holdings, the overall accomplice of the midstream power firm based by her father. She is an avid reader of authors starting from Jane Austen to Rick Riordan. She has been a fan of Texas Monthly since she was twelve. She can recite passages from her favourite articles, a few of which we revealed greater than a decade in the past. And, like Mike, she has been a fierce defender of our editorial independence. “Along with millions of other Texans, I’m thankful that Mike Levy persisted with his crazy idea to create Texas Monthly,” Randa instructed me. Every enterprise that lasts fifty years has needed to navigate one problem after one other, she famous, including: “Our team is committed to adapting, while also continuing the legacy of great storytelling that we’ve inherited from Mike and Bill and all the other exceptional journalists and business staffers who came before us.”
This article initially appeared within the February 2023 concern of Texas Monthly with the headline “A Very Texan Story.” Subscribe today.
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