 "Photo: Daniela Trujillo/The Daily Texan")
While John Thornton refers to The Texas Tribune primarily as “The Tribune,” many of his colleagues affectionately refer to it as “The Trib.”
Who started it? “That’s a good question,” Thornton said. “I don’t actually know. I think we’re just lazy, but I like the sound of it.”
Thornton, a successful Austin venture capitalist and former McKinsey & Company consultant, has assumed a new title: chairman and co-founder of the recently established Austin-based media operation. Thornton provided the infant news organization with $1 million of his own money.
Launched Nov. 3, The Texas Tribune describes itself on its Web site as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan public media organization” that aims to cover “public policy, politics, government and other matters of statewide concern.”
The media organization will collaborate with UT on two fronts. It will sponsor the University’s research, conducted by the Texas Politics project team, for five polls related to upcoming elections and Texans’ views on key state and national issues. It has also initiated a strategic partnership with the Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, which will eventually result in a lecture series and student internships.
As part of his new role at the news outlet, Thornton and his wife, Julie, both of whom have contributed significant sums to Democratic candidates in the past, intend to opt out of the political-contribution business in a show of commitment to the Web site’s pledge to nonpartisanship.
“One of the reasons I did this is because I have every confidence we can do more good supporting an instrument of civic discourse than we did contributing to politics,” Thornton said.
And, though he believes the media organization’s chief should buttress other newspapers’ coverage of statewide politics, he has no intentions of becoming the next William Randolph Hearst, the founder of one of the nation’s most powerful newspaper chains who used his perch to influence worldwide events, as characterized in the film “Citizen Kane.”
“I’m not interested in taking over the world,” Thornton said. “We don’t have aspirations for anywhere but Texas. It would be absolutely thrilling if we developed a model that could be emulated, but that would be something for somebody else to do.”
On its site, The Texas Tribune refers to itself as a “noble experiment.”
Thornton laughed at that language and clarified its meaning.
“I didn’t realize we professed our own nobility on the Web site. Let me put it this way: I think it’s a worthwhile experiment,” he said. “In fact, I think it’s more than an experiment because we’re going to succeed ... We’re trying to provide a supplement to the market-based provision of journalism. I’ll leave it to everyone else to figure out if it’s noble.”
The news outlet’s total budget for 2010 is $1.6 million, with roughly two-thirds of that amount designated for reporters’ salaries, travel and “that kind of thing,” Thornton said.
One year from now, the Web site will ask contributors and underwriters for a second round of donations.
“It’s up to the reader to judge whether our editorial product is worth supporting,” Thornton said. “But it’s up to us to show to them we’re developing a financial model that’s sustainable and, therefore, worthy of their support.”
One of the primary reasons The Texas Tribune is based in Austin, other than its proximity to the state Capitol, is UT, Thornton said. He sees securing student readership as one of the measures of his venture’s success.
“If UT students aren’t our readers, we haven’t done our job,” he said. “I’ve been around them to know that they do care about their civic life and the civic choices that they face. If we can’t engage them, we’ve certainly done something wrong.”
Beyond the two projects already launched in collaboration with UT, Thornton said he hopes the media organization will increase its interaction with students by employing them as interns and “generally getting ourselves more integrated into the student body.”
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