The board of the Texas Democracy Foundation, the nonprofit parent organization of the Texas Observer, on Wednesday voted unanimously to rescind its earlier plan to lay off the 68-year-old magazine’s entire staff and cease publication.
“This is wonderful news,” said Editor-in-Chief Gabriel Arana. “The Observer is indispensable to Texas and to democracy.”
The board issued a statement saying they have secured short-term pledges to bridge an immediate budget shortfall, “thanks to the extraordinary success of the staff’s fundraising this week.” A GoFundMe effort begun on Monday had raised more than $275,000 on Wednesday from more than 3,000 supporters.
The board had formally announced the layoffs and shutdown to the staff on Monday, at a contentious meeting at which they sought to answer no questions. However, most staffers had found out about the decision the previous evening, via a story in another publication.
The statement, addressed to the “Texas Observer Community” included an apology to the staff “for the abruptness of the layoff vote” and said the board “deeply regret[s]” the way the staff found out. The board also apologized to major donors Lynne Dobson and Greg Wooldridge of the Tejemos Foundation and to “our community of contributors, readers and supporters.” The foundation had made a major donation to the Observer last year, but the board said the nature of that gift was misunderstood by the Observer organization.
The change of plan came in the wake of an outpouring of public support for the Observer. In addition to the GoFundMe effort, readers, former staffers and former board members, and prominent journalists from around the country reached out to Observer journalists and allies to express their solidarity with the campaign to keep the magazine afloat.
“I just got chills,” said Gayle Reaves, the Observer’s editor-at-large, when news reached staffers. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of our incredible supporters and my colleagues and the board members who helped us.”
See here for the background, and here for the statement. That statement includes a call that “we work collectively to get through the immediate future—and find a sustainable model to ensure the longevity of our beloved magazine”, so there’s clearly still work to be done. You can click the embedded image to visit the GoFundMe page if you want to contribute to that, I’m sure the more they get for the immediate issue the easier the longer-term one will be to figure out. Whatever the case, at least now they’re trying to figure it out, and for that we can be thankful. The Trib, which goes into detail about those challenges that still need to be dealt with, has more.