Remembering John Thornton, founding father of The Texas Tribune

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Texas and the American journalism group have misplaced a luminary. John Thornton, a founding father of The Texas Tribune and one of the crucial very important and influential leaders in nonprofit journalism, died on Saturday. He was 59.

His passing is an immeasurable loss for our workers, our board, our many supporters and readers previous and current. With out John, the Tribune and the ecosystem of nonprofit information that it helped construct wouldn’t exist. The Tribune was born in 2008 from his seek for a sustainable mannequin for information. He was a number one enterprise capitalist in Austin on the time, having served as managing companion of Austin Ventures. He and his companions had been finding out the decline within the media enterprise. Newspapers and tv stations had been slashing their staffs. Protection of state capitols — the locations the place billions of the general public’s {dollars} are spent to help our faculties, roads and well being care — was disappearing the quickest. John concluded that public service journalism was a public good — and that the business companies that had historically supported it had been unlikely to maintain it shifting ahead.

So he conceived of the idea of a dependable, sincere, and truthful nonprofit information outlet dedicated to partaking Texans and empowering them to be lively members of their democracy. He then recruited Evan Smith, then the editor and president of Texas Month-to-month, to be CEO. And he supplied the preliminary seed donation and fundraising help that allowed Evan and Ross Ramsey, our third co-founder, to rent a workers.

“Without John Thornton, there would be no Texas Tribune,” mentioned Ross Ramsey, co-founder of the Tribune. “He was the principal author of the business plan that made us successful, and that has become a model for news startups around the country. He was smart, funny, intense, and dedicated to the idea that news is a public good that is critical to a functioning democracy. All of us continue to benefit from his work. I’m grateful to count him as a friend.”

The Tribune, in fact, was a smashing success. Now our journalists span the state — they’re in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Fort Value, San Antonio, El Paso, Waco, Brownsville, Odessa, Lufkin and Washington, D.C.. We’re launching native information websites in Waco and Austin and probably past— an initiative that John enthusiastically supported. Our work holds public officers accountable and lifts up the wants and experiences of Texans throughout the state. The affect has been acknowledged by quite a few awards, together with the Peabody Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, the Nationwide On-line Information Affiliation Awards, the Society of Skilled Journalists and the Texas Managing Editors. Final 12 months, we had been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. John’s authentic imaginative and prescient not solely got here to life — it exceeded everybody’s, together with his personal, expectations.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say John Thornton changed American journalism — and saved it,” mentioned Evan Smith, co-founder and former CEO of the Tribune. “No one made him do this. He believed in standing up and supporting, with his time and money, the right kind of news organizations around the country because he knew the consequences of the vast need going unmet. For nearly 20 years, he put in the work. He was a pioneer and a visionary, and he catalyzed a movement. Every community is better, smarter and healthier because of him. He gave people who never met him and never knew his name the means to be more thoughtful and productive citizens — to be the best civic versions of themselves. That’s especially true in Texas. In all 254 counties, there’s a place to turn for reliable, credible, independent local news because of The Texas Tribune, and there is a Texas Tribune only because of John. This was his baby. It was his thing. We walked in his footsteps. All 31 million of us in this state are in his debt.”

However he didn’t cease on the Tribune.

Our mannequin has served as an inspiration for scores of nonprofit information websites throughout the nation. Indispensable retailers like CalMatters, Mississippi As we speak and the Nevada Impartial have immediately cited the Tribune as inspiration. Cities and states throughout the nation now have their very own variations of the Tribune. And John has performed a significant function of their development. In 2018, he took his nonprofit information imaginative and prescient nationwide by co-founding the American Journalism Venture. Working with co-founder Elizabeth Inexperienced, founding father of the nonprofit training publication Chalkbeat, he recruited funders throughout the nation to spend money on native information nonprofits. The AJP supplies much-needed funds, nevertheless it additionally supplies very important enterprise and strategic help to make sure that the retailers it’s backing can obtain sustainability. Thus far, the AJP has raised greater than $225 million for 50 nonprofit newsrooms working in 36 states, together with supporting the Tribune’s funding in native information.

“John Thornton didn’t just imagine a future for nonprofit news in Texas — he built it,” mentioned Sonal Shah, CEO of the Tribune. “His vision has shaped the national movement to revitalize journalism and his belief in the power of public service journalism laid the foundation for stronger, healthier communities. This movement to support local news wouldn’t be possible without his leadership and relentless advocacy. We are all better for it.”

Anybody who met John instantly noticed his ardour and his power. He was sensible, humorous, beneficiant and supportive. He was a mentor to many.

“No one was more passionate about The Texas Tribune and rallying people to the cause of public service journalism than John Thornton,” mentioned Trei Brundrett, chair of the Tribune’s board of administrators. “We will miss our fellow board member, who we could always count on to be more ambitious in service of our mission. We will do our best to match his enthusiasm and make sure the Tribune is an incurring institution and reflection of his legacy.”

“John was a nonprofit journalism mastermind, a visionary and true believer who changed the trajectory of my career not once but twice,” mentioned Emily Ramshaw, former editor-in-chief of the Tribune and co-founder of The nineteenth. “He vibrated with ambition and start-up energy. His enthusiasm was infectious. (His love of cargo shorts, not so much.) John loved deeply; no matter how full his plate was, he always made sure you knew how proud of you he was. My heart is broken, but his legacy lives on, in the hundreds of nonprofit newsrooms that followed his lead.”

He’s survived by his spouse, Erin Thornton, and two stepsons, Wyatt Driscoll and Wade Driscoll. Plans for a memorial will probably be introduced quickly.

The mission and the values he instilled within the Tribune will persist. We already miss him.