The Midweek #62: The Civic Joins the San Antonio Media Landscape

There’s a new medium in town, and it’s calling itself ​The Civic​. Its first newsletter was released Tuesday by Philip Reichert, the Substack site’s editor and executive director. Reichert, who attended West Point and served in an intelligence role in the Army, is going to test the viability of remote work by living in New York City and working to keep his finger on the pulse of San Antonio.

He has hired Jarrett Whitener, a reporter based in San Antonio who has spent the last five years working for Community Impact, a family-owned news group that for the last 20 years has been establishing local news operations in the Austin-San Antonio corridor with its initial focus on the corridor cities other than the two major metros. It has since expanded coverage and over time, has hired some good, young reporters who have moved on to other publications.

Former Rackspace president, ScaleWorks founder, and San Antonio native Lew Moorman is serving as chairman. He is the driving force and funder behind the Civic’s launch, although he has said he has no interest in involving himself in its day-to-day operations. Moorman was a founding board member and funder of the Rivard Report as it evolved into a nonprofit and eventually changed names to the San Antonio Report.

David Heard, chief marketing officer at SecureLogix and along with Moorman, a co-founder of Tech Bloc in 2015, is on the board. The third board member is Charles Blain, president of Urban Reform and the Urban Reform Institute, a Houston-based think tank focused on free-market approaches to urban policy.

I can vouch for Moorman not using his position to try to control coverage or influence the presentation of news. He does hold strong opinions, and occasionally posts a well-written column on Substack under the title, ​Movements Start Small​. Moorman’s views and writings are often provocative and always well argued. We’ve often debated local issues over the years, but we agree on a lot.

One important view we share is that San Antonio is slowly becoming a news desert over time. I applaud his decision to move some of his capital and energy behind a new initiative, even knowing that such an experiment is a high-risk venture. A media startup is not for the faint of heart.

But this growing city – and it continues to grow its population faster than almost anywhere else in the country, despite The Civic’s implication that growth is slowing – needs more competent, trusted journalists.

My guess is that San Antonio has less than 20% of the fulltime, print, digital and broadcast journalists today than it had 20 years ago before the Great Recession and the accelerated demise of daily newspaper and network affiliate television newsroom staffs.Yet the city has grown by hundreds of thousands of residents. And it isn't just this city.

The entire Austin-San Antonio corridor continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, with many of the corridor cities experiencing the same challenges faced in the two metros: a shortage of housing stock that has led to steep price increases, worsening traffic congestion with no real mass transit solutions, rising utility costs with both electricity and water supply at risk of not being able to meet rising demand.

Meanwhile, look at the local media and do a little arithmetic: subtract crime and traffic coverage, food and culinary coverage, and sports, and what is left? Not enough to inform engaged citizens. Reviewing the newest restaurant, keeping up with bars and other venues that open and close, and profiling chefs is not unimportant, but it requires a lot less editorial muscle than, say, undertaking an analysis of two of former Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s key initiatives: Ready to Work and the 2022 Housing Bond

A lot of this city’s financial woes, including a city budget running deficits now that are proving harder and harder to cover, can be traced to more than 100 years of economic segregation, which left San Antonio with dozens of inner city neighborhoods lacking basic infrastructure, and our continuing sprawl, which comes at an enormous cost to those of us living in the urban core who have to subsidize all that suburban growth.

As you would surmise, the available funds to address the first part of the above problem are severely limited by the need to keep up with investments in the sprawling outreaches.

Reichert’s initial newsletter noted some of the numbers that really bother civic and business leaders here when the topic of economic development comes up. Yes, we compare very unfavorably to Austin and Dallas when it comes to corporate relocations, smart job growth, and GDP growth. It’s also true we have higher poverty rates and much lower higher education attainment levels than are found in those two cities.

I don’t think you can talk about one without talking about the other.

My intent here is not to nitpick The Civic’s opening salvo. Let’s give these guys time to find their voice. And while they are doing that, as a 501(c)(3), the small team is going to have to also think about how they are going to raise the funds they need to grow and operate with some strength and impact. Even if they prove good at in-depth reporting, they won’t win a returning audience of any size unless they can publish with some regularity.

That means wooing more donors, more members, and more sponsors. Monika Maeckle and I are among the initial supporters. Our names are not there because we are libertarians or conservatives. But we do support anyone as crazy as the two of us who believes enough in the role of the press in a democracy to take the leap and launch a new medium.

It’s been 15 years since Monika and I started the Rivard Report, and I believe San Antonio has benefited in many ways from that effort. Other than writing a check once a year, we are no longer associated with the San Antonio Report. It’s been three or four years since I stopped writing for the site and served on its board.

Even now, with the bigcitysmalltown podcast and this weekly newsletter, I often find myself addressing topics that otherwise are going unnoted in the local media. There is more room than ever for people to find a spot in the plaza pública.

Check out The Civic. You might not be ready to support it financially while you await more of its work, but sharing your email will get you on the mailing list and will cost you nothing.

Suerte, Phil and Jarrett. You’ll need luck, but it will be truly exhilarating, for you and for all of us, if you can create something of value. This city and region need it.