Texas Tribune: Public Administration

Texas Tribune: Key Challenges That Pose a Threat to the Proposed Growth Plan The Texas Tribune is an Austin-based, member-supported, not-for-profit organization that commits itself to informing Texans and engaging with them about statewide issues, politics, and public policy. Founded by Ross Ramsey (owner, Texas Weekly), Evan Smith (former editor-in-chief, Texas Monthly) and John Thornton (recognized venture capitalist in Austin) in 2009, the Tribune grew from being a simple premier newsletter into one of the country's largest statehouse news bureaus, home to over 50 dedicated business leaders, designers, technologists, editors, and reporters.

Most of the popularity that the Tribune enjoys stems from its coverage of major candidates for office, who are accorded opportunities to explain to the Texas citizenry, through various platforms including the organization's op-ed site TribTalk, Trib Newsletters, and live events on how they plan to tackle various issues related to public policy. The Tribune provides its content at no charge to print news organizations across the state, and nationally in conjunction with the Washington Post.

One of its most famous shots was Senator Wendy Davis' 10-hour filibuster about an abortion pill, which the organization streamed on YouTube via its live stream system in the Senate Chamber (Ellis, 2014). Following a successful five years in operation, with an attractive revenue stream averaging $27 million, the Tribune now feels ready to grow its audience base beyond Austin (Ellis, 2014).

The Issue Emily Ramshaw, chief editor at the Tribune, believes that the organization has been able to obtain sustainable growth and it only reasonable that it expands its scope to covering the needs of Texans outside the capital (Ellis, 2014). This, according to her, is the only way to get the Tribune to advance its mission of bringing accountability to public policy to a greater reader population, and to consequently win more potential subscribers outside the capital.

In her words, "if you're tethered to the news room, if you're tethered to the hamster wheel, you're not telling stories that affect people's lives;" and she believes, therefore, that if the company is to be able to efficiently serve the entire Texan populace, it will need to go out and engage those outside the capital just as much as it engages those within (Ellis, 2014, n.pag).

The Tribune's management posits that the organization currently serves 400,000 people, yet the Texan population is estimated at a massive 26 million, around 4 million of whom are potential subscribers living outside the capital (Ellis, 2014). The company recognizes that if it is able to get these potential subscribers on board, it could increase its subscription proceeds by a significant amount.

The problem, however, is that these new would-be subscribers may not be all that hungry for in-depth analyses on public policy and political issues because if that were the case, they would have subscribed to the Tribune already. The population living away from the capital is likely to be skewed towards older age, and the greater proportion may, therefore, be less interested in policy and politics, and more interested in brief, general news items.

This would only mean that in order for the Tribune to be successful in its expansion plan, it will need to come up with ways of ensuring that the content developed addresses the needs of both the insider and the new-comer audiences. It will need to add new layers to what it already produces so that insiders are able to still obtain the in-depth analyses they are used to, and new-comers can also find something that interests them.

That is, however, not the only problem that the organization has to contend with in structuring its growth plans. The Tribune thrives mostly on collaborations and partnerships, and as much as it provides its content for free to media houses, most of these are beginning to view it as a competitor, and may be unwilling to collaborate with it in its growth plan. The organization may, therefore, be forced to come up with new ways of delivering content.

This paper seeks to devise ways of addressing these and other concerns that are threatening to interfere with the proposed plan's successful implementation. It will be guided by the following research questions: 1. How would the proposed expansion affect the Human Resource Department? 2. Would the funding that they currently receive, through donations, increase or decrease based on the market that they target outside of Austin? 3. How can the company determine the size of its prospective audience population? 4.

Will the company run trials of the local and state wide government within certain markets? 5. How involved will they be within the local elections, and how much of an impact will they have? 6. Will other companies within the new markets see the company as their competition or as an asset? What legal actions and procedures can they take to boost success if others see them as competition? 7.

Will the organization stick with core values during expansion? Effect on Human Resource Management The proposed expansion would cause major changes to the organization's business model because it (the organization) would then be forced to restructure the same to produce new, brief content to cater for the needs of new-comers in addition to the in-depth analytical content that it is already used to. The implication would be a subsequent increase in the number of new specialist roles and a restructuring process geared at formalizing the organization's HRM processes.

With the employment of more staff to serve a larger reader base, and the introduction of new specialty roles to respond effectively to the varying needs of the population, the organization will be forced to formalize its HRM processes and define areas of responsibility so that work structures are clear and functions/duties do not overlap (Price, 2007).

Moreover, the organization will have to spend more on employee training; i) on-the-job training to equip them with the relevant skill and knowhow to develop and deliver content that addresses the unique needs of both exiting readers and new comers; and ii) diversity training -- as the number of employees increases, issues of diversity become more prominent, and the human resource department will need to work harder to make employees more appreciative of their differences, and the workplace more favorable for minorities (Price, 2007).

Failure to do so could result in unnecessary litigation costs (Price, 2007). Effect of Expansion on Funding and Budgeting As far as funding is concerned, the organization stands to benefit considerably from its expansion plan. Being a not-for-profit organization, the Texas Tribune is funded by foundation grants, corporate sponsorships, gifts, individual contributions, and membership contributions as stipulated in U.S. Code 501(c)3 (Ruppel, 2007). Corporate sponsorships and membership/individual contributions are the primary source of revenue for the tribune. For instance, proceeds from membership subscriptions almost quadrupled between 2010 and 2013 (Ellis, 2014).

This is to mean that if the Tribune is able to, within the first year of implementing the growth plan, win say 1,000 new, out-of-Austin subscribers out of the 4 million that it is targeting, it stands to make around $250,000 in new subscriptions and almost $1 million in total subscriptions in that year alone. The organization also stands to obtain more corporate sponsorships from its annual Texas Tribune Festival, as well as its regular TribTalk events in college, which are expected to increase in number as a result of the expansion process.

Market and Program Evaluation The company has identified, and targets two reader types in its growth plan -- heavy users, who subscribe to the Tribune for its in-depth analyses of policy and political statewide issues; and light users, who may not be interested in these in-depth political analyses, but who would nonetheless wish to be acquainted with brief overviews on general news items.

The organization will evaluate the success or failure of its growth plan based on its ability to develop and deliver content that addresses the needs of both reader groups. However, in order to set its targets, it will need to first determine the size and profile of both reader markets outside Austin. Following a series of quantitative surveys on the reader market, the Tribune was able to establish a number of crucial attributes that it could use to categorize heavily-engaged users and light users.

It established that core users: i) Are more likely to be public sector workers ii) Are more likely to live in the capitol than in other places in the state iii) Are more engaged in civic issues iv) Are heavy news consumers on print, digital, and audiovisual media Light readers (the prospects), on the other hand, were found to be consumers of digital news, seekers of state news, and followers of at least one of Tribune's public policy verticals (Griggs, 2015).

With these distinguishing criteria, the organization was able to size its prospective market. It established that approximately 400,000 people in Texas meet the criteria for heavily-engaged users and around 4 million stand as prospects, being followers of at least one of the Tribune's policy subjects. This, on average, represents 1 out of every 5 Texans, and implies that that the greater proportion of the reader market outside Austin prefers brief overviews on general news items as opposed to in-depth analyses on politics.

However, the Tribune does not wish to stray from its niche of providing nonpartisan news on statewide issues, government issues, policy and politics just to boost reach (Griggs, 2015). For this reason, it will be forced to restructure its business model to develop content that addresses the needs of both the insider population and the light reader population.

It could, for instance, adopt a bifurcated audience strategy, where the brand is exposed to the 4 million prospective readers, and the organization focuses on building these as future loyalists and at the same time deepening the engagement of the 400,000 current loyalists, as shown in fig. 1 below Fig 1: Representation of the Bifurcated Audience Strategy for Addressing the Needs of both the Light Readers and the Core Users (Source: Griggs, 2015, n.pag) Moreover, the organization will need to change its program evaluation strategies to reflect the implemented changes.

Currently, the organization employs a summative strategy, which aims at determining the effect of a program by comparing outcomes wholesomely prior to, and after implementation; however, when dealing with a situation of varying needs, it may have to change to the formative approach, which evaluates outcomes based on how much they have been able to respond to the specific needs of individual reader groups (Morrow, et al., 2011).

Coverage: Local Government and Statewide Coverage Despite showing steady growth and putting up an impressive financial performance in its five years of existence, the Tribune may still not have an adequate resource base to provide coverage on statewide as well as local government issues facing citizens in all local jurisdictions in Texas.

The state has a total of 254 counties, and the best strategy to adopt in this case would be a step-by-step approach starting with the four large cities -- Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth -- and then extending to the smaller ones as the resource base grows.

This implies that for the very first years of the implementation of the expansion plan, the Tribune will focus on running trails of the statewide government as is the norm, in addition to those of the local governments of these large cities; and then it will gradually expand coverage on other local governments as the resource base grows. This will imply that the Tribune's involvement within the local election will be higher and so will its impact.

Moreover, this increased presence would boost inter and intra-governmental communication as more and more officials from underrepresented counties and local governments will get opportunities to interact with, and voice their policy-related concerns with statewide officials. Legislative Process As mentioned earlier on in this text, the Tribune's expansion plan could be hampered by lack of collaboration from news media distributors, especially if they see it as a threat or competitor in the coverage of state government policy issues.

John Bridges, the managing editor, Austin-American Statesman, for instance, points out that although his paper has published Tribune stories severally, most of his reporters consider it their rival and are often uncomfortable sharing information with an organization that they feel is a threat to their very own survival (Ellis, 2014). There is a high risk, therefore, that the Tribune will face a lot of opposition as it seeks to establish its presence in these new markets, despite offering its content to distributors for free.

To prevent this, Tribune could consider one of three options; i) it could introduce an entirely new for-profit limited liability company linked to it, but operating under a different name to publish its own stories; ii) it could acquire a smaller publishing company such as the Dallas Morning Newspaper that already has an established presence in its market, and then use this as a direct platform for publishing its stories; and iii) it could limit all its stories to the Texas Weekly, which is owned by one of the founders.

Option 1 would require the organization to follow the process of incorporation as laid out in Texan law -- file for Articles of Organizations with the Texas Secretary of State; file the IRS Form SS-4 granting them permission to operate; and then make the relevant filings for trademarks, patents, licenses, and permits (University of Houston, 2008). For option 2, the legal procedures will be less complex, and for option 3, just contract-signing.