Texas Observer Says It Will Shut Down

“I don’t know if it’s because I’m a young woman of color talking to men,” she told The Tribune. “I often wonder if my requests and directives would have been better received coming from a man. I was not respected as the board president by senior staff.”

She added: “That’s why the hiatus is so important so that we can fulfill current obligations, make the hard decisions about the layoffs and then think about what’s possible. I’m here making sure that we can fund some severance.”

While her reference to a hiatus implied that The Observer could return in some form, Mr. Arana and a former staff member, James Canup, said that Ms. Hernandez Holmes had announced a complete shutdown with layoffs during a video call with the staff on Monday. Mr. Canup, who was managing director, said he resigned in protest after the call.

The Observer has about 4,000 subscribers to the print magazine, which publishes six times a year, in addition to its online readers, but survives primarily on donations and grants, according to Robert R. Frump, a former board member who had been running business operations as a special adviser. He, too, resigned in protest, on Thursday.

Mr. Frump said The Observer had struggled to attract younger progressive donors and that its core supporters were “aging out and not as active and not as generous as they once were.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/business/media/texas-observer-closing.html