Is Evan Smith the Arianna Huffington of Texas?

President Obama called on a reporter from the Huffington Post in his first news conference, raising the status of “bloggers” to main stream media status and confirming the theory of many that the Huffington Post had played a large part in President Obama's political success.

Big Texas Democratic funders such as John Thornton are gathering millions of dollars to invest in Evan Smith's new project, the Texas Tribune, under the theory that the Texas Tribune will play a large part in the Texas Demoratic party's come back.

Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post

According to the July 10 article in Politico, For Huffington Post, left is right, Arianna Huffington claims that her publication is not partisan: “everything is fair game as long as we stick to the facts.” But the Huffington Post is a slew of liberal bloggers combined with news writers and editors who come from partisan backgrounds and write from a partisan perspective. Many believe the purpose of the Huffington Post is to create a community of like minded people.

Some say that the Huffington Post makes a shambles of the concept of fair and balanced reporting, or “the disinterested reporter,” but the Huffington Post seems to hold that there never was fair and balanced reporting and that following the facts is more balanced than constantly seeking to place one quote from “the left” next to one quote from “the right.” Says Politico:

“The idea that the traditional media’s obsession with the concept of objectivity is no guarantee of uncovering the truth - in fact sometimes an obstacle - is a fundamental premise of Huffington Post. Huffington herself often makes the case that the media’s insistence on viewing both her site and politics in general in terms of left and right can get in the way of a more complicated reality. “I think a lot of traditional reporters look at things in that way,” she said, “and miss the real shifts that are happening in American politics.””

The Huffington Post has its tabloid side. Not only does it reframe the news through a tabloid perspective, as if it were the Fox News of the left, but more than half of its online traffic is driven by gossip and entertainment stories. Because the site gets so much traffic from stories like “supermodel loses top,” columnist Simon Dumenco wrote that the Huffington Post is just as trashy as Maxim.

Financially, the Huffington Post is a success. Founded over four years ago, it now includes over 60 full time staffers. In December, the Huffington Post obtained $25 million from venture capitalists, not its first 8-digit investment, and in May it claimed to have 6.7 unique visitors.

Texas is the land of opportunity

For people who favor bringing power to the people and away from the Governor's rich donors and best friends, the state couldn't hold more potential.

According to the July 9 article Lone Star Rising in The Economist, Texas is not the most nourishing environment for hard working people:

“Texas has the highest proportion of people lacking health insurance of all 50 states; the third-highest poverty rate; the second-highest imprisonment rate; the highest teenage-birth rate; the lowest voter turnout; and the lowest proportion of high-school graduates. Mr Shapleigh is not surprised that these figures are so terrible: Texas spends less on each of its citizens than does any other state. Being a low-tax, low-spend state has not made Texans rich, though they are not dirt-poor either; their median income ranks 37th among the 50 states.

“These two faces of Texas are hardly a paradox. Texas has one of the most unequal income distributions of any state, a legacy of the days when rich ranch-owners and oil billionaires were served by poorly paid ranch hands and roughnecks; and when Mexican immigrants crossed an essentially open border at will to toil away at sun-scorched farm jobs for pay that “Anglo” (non-Hispanic white) workers would not contemplate.”

Newspapers and other mainstream media are collapsing in Texas. Since 2003, the number of full time reporters assigned to cover the Texas legislature has fallen from 28 to 18. In the meantime, Valley newspapers such as the Laredo Morning Times and the Valley Morning Star just started charging online readers for content, no longer offering their online material for free. Other newspapers are struggling to pay their bills with no relief in site.

While more Texans turn to online sources for their political information. A recent University of Texas poll revealed that while most Texans take part in conversations about politics with their friends or relatives (81%) and at the workplace (54%), online social networks such as MySpace or Facebook are rising quickly (27%) as well as blogs (18%).

Evan Smith and the Texas Tribune

According to a July 20 Quorum Report article by Phillip Martin, Can the Texas Tribune Breathe New Life Into Coverage and Discussion of Texas Politics?, although journalism has had noble goals for hundreds of years, “The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing,” current journalism has falls short:

“In an effort to tell their audience what they want to hear, instead of what they need to hear, news directors have traded away the substantive for the trivial.... the internet allows citizens to learn, discuss, and add to news stories that would otherwise be solely controlled and reported by for-profit news organizations who share the same principles as the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart: make the largest number of items available to the largest number of people, regardless of quality.”

The Texas Tribune is designed to be different. Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith says that the purpose of the Texas Tribune will be to “promote civic engagement and aggressive, spirited discourse on issues of public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide interest.” The Texas Tribune will be investing in talented reporters whose emphasis will be almost exclusively on investigative journalism.

Says Smith, “[The Texas Tribune] will still do original reporting, but also aggregated reporting. We will also build netter databases for information – even if it’s already public.” The Texas Tribune will invest in original video, podcasts, and interactive graphics, and will create internet architecture that allows regular citizens to search government databases that are otherwise almost impossible to search. The Texas Tribune will also provide an open syndication model so that it's work reappears in newspapers across the state.

So will the Texas Tribune be partisan? Like Ms. Huffington, Evan Smith says no: “'We are going to say nice things about Democrats and Republicans that do good things, and bad things about Democrats and Republicans that do bad things.' … 'We all want our elected officials to be accountable, and we want the laws to benefit and not harm Texans. We want smart discussion of big ideas. That is something that, right now in our minds, is lacking.'”

The Tribune plans to reach its civic participation goals by hosting policy conferences across the state, inviting the public and charging a small fee for admittance to encourage participation.

Regarding funding, the Texas Tribune is beginning with Austin Venture capitalist John Thornton's blessings. According to the July 17 New York Times article, Web News Start-Up Has Its Eye on Texas, “Mr. Thornton said he had given $1 million to the project and raised $1.2 million more. He plans to raise a total of $4 million from individuals and foundations by the time the site begins operating, possibly in November.

It is yet to be seen whether the Texas Tribune will change Texas politics, but Evan Smith has a healthy attitude: “Out of the gate, it is not going to be perfect. But we can be trapped by the idea that everything must be perfect right out of the gate, that we aren’t willing. I want us to be fearless – if we fail out of the gate, we’ll just learn more.”