INFORMATION ABOUT RIVARD REPORT, STAFF, SAN ANTONIO, AND JOURNALISM IN GENERAL

SAN ANTONIO
Tricentennial year.
Calling San Antonio a city that “does not stand down from racism, xenophobia, and bigotry,” Nirenberg further described it as “a city where the cause of the Confederacy is no longer glorified by monuments in public squares. Although he has been gone for 50 years, Dr. King’s words are perhaps as powerful today as they were when he said them. Because we continue to fight his fight against inequality.”
Change seemed to be the only constant this year in San Antonio. One day, an old downtown building is there, the next it’s gone, replaced by construction cranes and steel beams. And just when it seemed that Ivy Taylor was going to roll into another term as the city’s mayor, along comes Ron Nirenberg going door-to-door and pulling off an upset victory. That triggered its own cycle of change in and around City Hall.
To reflect back on all the comings and goings, and with a hat tip to the Washington Post‘s annual The List for the concept, the Rivard Report compiled its own, highly subjective list of what’s in the rearview mirror as we leave 2017 behind and head into San Antonio’s Tricentennial year.

OUT	IN
Mayor Ivy Taylor	Mayor Ron Nirenberg
Old barges operated by Rio San Antonio	New electric river barges operated by Go Rio Cruises
Hurricane Harvey	Flood preparedness
Taciturn Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich	Outspoken Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich
Shopping mall food courts	Food Hall at the Pearl
San Antonio Stars	San Antonio FC
UTSA President Ricardo Romo	UTSA President Taylor Eighmy
Kelly Field’s 100th anniversary	San Antonio’s 300th anniversary
Robert E. Lee High School	Legacy of Educational Excellence (LEE) High School
Confederate monument in Travis Park	Christmas tree in Travis Park
The old Solo Serve building	Construction cranes and street closures downtown, including Frost Bank Tower
Spurs injury report	Tony Parker and Kawhi Leonard
Google Fiber huts	Google Fiber in very select locations
Edward Benavides, Tricentennial CEO	Carlos Contreras, Tricentennial Commission interim executive director
Glass walls around Alamo Plaza	Shade trees on Alamo Plaza
Texas House Speaker Joe Straus	State Senate President Dan Patrick
Councilman Alan Warrick (D2)	Councilman Cruz Shaw (D2)
Proposed apartments near the Hays Street Bridge	Views of the Hays Street Bridge
Satellite parking at San Antonio International Airport (SAT)	Short-term parking at SAT
U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-San Antonio)	Twenty candidates for the 21st Congressional District
Lone Star Brewery redevelopment in Southtown	Merchants Ice complex and Red Berry Estate redevelopments on the Eastside
Councilman Cris Medina (D7)	Councilwoman Ana Sandoval (D7)
Brad Parscale	Jill Giles and Kori Ashton
Bathroom bill	Ashley Smith
Amazon HQ2	Hulu Viewer Experience Headquarters
Tacos and Tequila	The Modernist
Local Coffee heads to Austin	Rosella Coffee in downtown San Antonio
By many measures and in every slice of life, 2017 was an eventful year for San Antonio, Texas, and the United States.

San Antonio saw changes in City leadership with the election of six new City Council members and Mayor Ron Nirenberg in the May general and June runoff elections, as well as the passage of a historic bond and “equity lens” budget. The city mourned the loss of two men in uniform, 10 migrants who perished in a human smuggling incident in late July, a former City councilwoman and state representative, and others.

A school board member was arrested on federal bribery and fraud charges in February, and acquitted in December. Public art installations as well as Alamo’s Plaza potential makeover caused public outcry throughout the year, and scandals surrounding the leadership of the Tricentennial and the nonprofit Centro San Antonio marred the holiday season as the city headed into the year-long celebration of its 300th anniversary.

Texas experienced much political turmoil over NAFTA negotiations and contentious legislation such as the “sanctuary cities” and “bathroom” bills. Hurricane Harvey in late August and the tragic shooting at Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church on Nov. 5 went down as the most devastating natural disaster and mass shooting in the state’s history, respectively.

And Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency ushered in sweeping changes for the United States throughout 2017 – just ask Gregg Popovich.

The Spurs coach was not the only one who spoke candidly on the year’s happenings. Here are some of the most memorable quotes from the Rivard Report‘s 2017 coverage.

“Don’t be a bystander. Education is the key to everything. Be strong. Love yourself. … Believe in yourself. … Never give up.”

– Holocaust survivor Rose Williams, who at 90 continues to share her experiences with San Antonio students and as a volunteer at the Jewish Federation of San Antonio’s Holocaust Memorial Museum housed at the Barshop Jewish Community Center.

“Tonight the voters rejected the politics of division and false choices, and they said ‘yes’ to a bigger and brighter vision of inclusion, of diversity, of respecting each other, of fairness, of respecting each and every person in San Antonio … Tonight the voters said ‘yes’ to a mayor for all of San Antonio.”

– Ron Nirenberg upon winning the June 10 runoff election over incumbent Mayor Ivy Taylor

“To me, it’s broken people … people not being in a relationship with their Creator, and therefore not being in a good relationship with their families and their communities … and not being productive members of society.”

– Former Mayor Ivy Taylor on the causes of poverty during an April 3 mayoral candidates forum. Taylor became the subject of a viral video that cut off the rest of her response, which addressed public policy, including her stance on improving access to education and reducing teen pregnancy as a means to ending systemic poverty.

“If I were to be in elected office after this, I think you might spy me running for mayor. The question just would be the timing of that.”

– Rey Saldaña, hinting at a possible mayoral run after his final term as District 4 councilman ends in 2019.

“Everybody seems to forget where in the hell they came from. We’re all immigrants in this country, all of us are.”

– Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff on supporters of Senate Bill 4, signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott on May 7. Bexar County in June joined the City of San Antonio, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and others, in a lawsuit to block the “sanctuary cities” law.

“Thank you, Councilman Cheese Grater – excuse me, Councilman Krier.”

– Former Councilman Mike Gallagher (D10) addressing former Councilman Joe Krier (D9), who frequently referred to the sculpture, Liquid Crystal, at the Henry B. González Convention Center as “the cheese grater.”

“When you are covered in dirt, you realize you’re not better than anybody else.”

– Erika Prosper, H-E-B executive and wife of Mayor Ron Nirenberg on her humble upbringing and working in migrant fields in the Rio Grande Valley.

“I am convinced from an aesthetic but also from a civic standpoint that the walls do need to come down. Democracy has its public places, and sometimes it’s not always pretty … but I think we can find a balance to restore the sanctity of the Alamo, but also respect the public nature of it.”

– Then-mayoral candidate Ron Nirenberg on an Alamo Master Plan design proposal to put glass walls around Alamo Plaza.

“Our primary mission at the San Antonio Police Department is to handle calls for service and work with the community to prevent and solve crimes. That is it. It’s not to chase people around and ask for their immigration status. For every second an officer spends dealing with an immigration matter, that’s a second … responding to your emergency calls [that’s] twittered away.”

– San Antonio Police Chief William McManus on Senate Bill 4.

“You’re depleting half of your workforce resources if you don’t realize women have a lot to offer.”

– Guido Construction CEO Maryann Guido on the benefits and importance of equality in the workforce.

“We’re very fortunate that there weren’t 38 of these people trapped inside this vehicle found dead.”

– San Antonio Fire Department Chief Charles Hood on eight people found dead along with about 30 other people left inside a tractor-trailer in July. Two more people died later in the human smuggling incident.

“She was the person I went to battle with, and the person I went shoe-shopping with.”

– Former State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte on Ruth Jones McClendon, a Democrat from San Antonio who represented Texas House District 120 from 1996 to 2016 and San Antonio’s City Council District 2 from 1993 to 1996. McClendon died at age 74 on Dec. 19.

“She appears to be a very sophisticated crook.”

– City Manager Sheryl Sculley on former Centro San Antonio accountant Alicia Henderson, who is thought to have embezzled up to $260,000 from the nonprofit.

“Not until now.”

– Former SAISD board member Olga Hernandez, in response to her defense attorney when he asked if she thought two people seeking school district contracts had ulterior motives when they lavished her with gifts. She was acquitted Dec. 19 on federal charges of fraud and bribery.

“It sounded like a hundred Detroit diesels parked out there, cranked up all the way. And then whenever the wind got really bad right before the eye hit, the whole house was shaking. It felt like a freight train coming by us.”

– Rockport resident James Sammons on Hurricane Harvey.

“We have the freedom to choose. And rather than choose darkness like the young man did that day, I say we choose life.”

– Frank Pomeroy, pastor at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, in his sermon one week after Devin Kelley opened fire at the church on Nov. 5, killing 26 and injuring more than 20 parishioners. Pomeroy’s 14-year-old daughter was among those slain.

“Our country is an embarrassment to the world.”

– Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich, delivering scathing criticism of President Donald Trump’s administration and his comments on professional athletes at the team’s media day in late September.

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RIVARD REPORT
Tweets 15K, 3,693 Following, 18K Followers

The Rivard Report is San Antonio’s leading local online news source. We are nonprofit and nonpartisan and we do not have a paywall. Our content is available at no cost to everyone in the city and beyond. We publish without fear or favor, or any obligation to outside owners or interests. We cover all that is best about San Antonio: its personalities, neighborhoods, businesses, culture, cuisine, arts and entertainment. We tackle the city’s problems and challenges, too, and spotlight innovative solutions, many to be found in other cities competing for the next generation of talented workers and their families. We feature the work of a team of curious, energetic staff journalists and publish contributions from respected freelance journalists. We encourage lively, civil debate in the comments section that accompanies each of our stories. We regularly publish articles and commentaries from elected officials, civic and community leaders, entrepreneurs and other business leaders, educators and artists — San Antonians from all walks of life. We believe a well informed and connected community is essential to making San Antonio a better place to live, work and play. To become San Antonio’s most trusted and lively source of news and commentary. The Rivard Report is a nonprofit corporation and is exempt from taxes under Section 501(c)(3). It has its own governing board: Richard “Dick” Schlosberg III is the founding chairman; John “Chico” Newman is the founding vice-chairman; and Lew Moorman is the founding Treasurer. Editor & Director Robert Rivard serves as the Board Secretary. Founding Directors include Katy Flato, Dan Goodgame, and Laura Saldivar Luna.

Rivard Report board members from left: Dan Goodgame, Laura Saldivar Luna, John “Chico” Newman Jr., Richard T. Schlosberg III, Katy Flato, and Director Robert Rivard (not pictured: Lew Moorman). Photo by Kathryn Boyd-Batstone.

The Rivard Report is member-supported. We do not receive any government funding. We do receive philanthropic and foundation funding, and we feature paid advertising and sponsorships. The engagement of readers, commenters, article contributors, and financial supporters is vital to our growth and community service. We offer a variety of membership levels for individuals and businesses, and hope you will join today as an individual or business supporter.

Longtime journalist Robert Rivard and his wife, Monika Maeckle, a publishing executive, founded the Rivard Report as a community blog in February 2012. It now reaches more than 200,000 unique visitors each month. We reorganized in late 2015 as a 501(c)(3) with a diverse and accomplished Board of Directors. The commitment of these board members speaks to the importance of our mission to serve San Antonio with homegrown, trusted journalism.

They join a smart and committed staff of editors and reporters devoted not only to breaking news, but, more importantly, to providing thoughtful and judicious analysis and profiles of the dominant players, policies, and politics behind the news.

We will continue to focus on core issues that define San Antonio’s present and will determine its future – city and county politics and management; education; the environment; health; business, with a special focus on tech; urban development; neighborhoods; and arts and culture.

We aim to explain how developments in those core coverage areas affect the city’s residents now, and how they might enhance or harm their futures. And, as always, we invite and depend upon Rivard Report readers to weigh in with their observations and commentary, so we can fully and accurately represent community views, discourse, and debate.

“One measure of growth as the Report turns six years old next month is that some of our journalists have moved on to pursue other opportunities, while others, some familiar, some new to San Antonio, take their place and help us evolve along with the city we serve,” said Robert Rivard, co-founder and publisher. “I know Beth and her team will have more such news to report in the coming months. We deeply appreciate our many individual and business donors who make this growth and service to community possible.”

Not everyone welcomes a letter from the Internal Revenue Service at year’s end, but there was celebration at the Rivard Report as we opened the office mail in December and learned that our application to become a 501(c)3 nonprofit had been granted. The exemption was made effective Aug 12, 2015, the date of our original application. We had expected a longer wait, and didn’t quite know what to make of the backdated approval.

What we did know is that a new chapter was opening for our small, but growing staff and the big ambitions all of us share to be the most valued news source for the engaged citizens of San Antonio.

We celebrate the Rivard Report’s fourth anniversary of publication on Saturday, Feb. 13. In nearly every U.S. city of any size, online media startups have emerged out of the disruption triggered by continuous technology innovation. Tech has revolutionized the media landscape, this time precipitating the steady demise of print periodicals. More news and information is consumed on handheld smart phones and tablets than any other platform, and that consumption is two-way. It’s interactive, it’s social, and it moves and morphs very fast.

The Rivard Report’s small staff has grown from four to eight people, and we publish a number of paid freelance contributors. We’ve published hundreds of non-journalists from all walks of life, giving their work the same display and prominence as our staff. Our first such contributor four years ago was Jeremy Fields, a former Lake/Flato architect here who compared his new life in Hamburg, Germany to what he found missing in San Antonio. The most recent community contributor was Keisha Bentley-Edwards, an assistant professor at UT-Austin, whose commentary on Black History Month appeared last week.

We’ve published highly successful tech entrepreneurs, school teachers and students, mayors and congressmen, artists and architects, priests and preservationists, CEOs and hourly wage workers, millennials and boomers, bartenders and food truck operators, developers and neighborhood leaders, community activists, homeless advocates, scientists and symphony musicians. We try to give voice to everyone with a meaningful message to share.

Why go nonprofit? Look around the country at our fellow members of the nonprofit Institute for Nonprofit News. Journalists everywhere, many former newspaper people like myself, are engaged in building new media models to serve their communities. With few exceptions, it has been a struggle to build something economically viable and sustaining. The for-profit business model was limiting the Rivard Report’s growth. We were stable but too small, with little prospect for sustained growth without outside investment. Yet investors wanted a return on their investment that the Rivard Report could not deliver. We kept our heads above water, but we could see nonprofit media faring better.

As a nonprofit, we will continue to accept the kind of advertising that now appears on the Rivard Report. We’ve never accepted advertising that was inconsistent with our mission of community service. Just as businesses (including the Rivard Report) support entities like Texas Public Radio and KLRN, the local public broadcasting television station, we will continue to accept that support here, while also becoming member-supported. Yes, we are asking for your membership and financial support. No sum is too small or too large. We will spend every dollar wisely.

We also will seek foundation support and grants, and reach out to the community of generous philanthropists in San Antonio. In fact, we already are the beneficiaries of some very generous philanthropic and foundation gifts. In the coming weeks, as we make changes on our website to reflect our nonprofit status, we will publish the source and amount of all our tax-deductible donor funds. There is a fair amount of administrative work converting to nonprofit status, but that work is nearly complete. In the next week, we will publish new Purpose, Mission and Governance Statements, a link to our code of ethics, and new Membership and About Us pages. We will introduce readers to our expanded staff and board of directors later this week.

With your support we will be able to offer a greater volume and range of content than we now offer. As we grow, we will undertake investigative projects, cover local government more thoroughly, add more business and tech news, extend our reach to other parts of the growing metropolitan area, expand arts and performing arts coverage, and serve as a better guide for life and recreation in the city and surrounding region. Expect more videos, more graphics and more multimedia packages.

We have long admired our neighbors to the north in Austin, the nonprofit Texas Tribune, which has set a national standard as a nonprofit, nonpartisan online news publication. The Tribune’s mission is different than ours. Journalists there cover state government and politics. We are a metro site with a different mix of news and features. What we do want to emulate is the Tribune’s level of excellence and relevance, its steady growth, and its success in attracting the kind of financial support necessary to sustain its operations.

As we have grown and our mission has expanded we have talked about a name change, something more institutional. We’ve tabled that conversation while we undertake all the other changes in this period of transition. For now, we are staying the Rivard Report, your reliable source of credible local news and information, and the place to tell your story. We are part of the much broader effort underway by so many to make San Antonio a better city. We invite you to join us.
Monday morning inside the Rivard Report conference room: I am sitting with Iris Dimmick, our managing editor, and Wendy Cook, a part-time editor who returned to San Antonio after a career as a former Washington Post and Associated Press editor. We are meeting with Bekah McNeel, our education reporter.

We all agree we could easily use a second full-time education reporter to let the prolific Bekah catch her breath and still meet the ever-growing community appetite for more education coverage. That’s not going to happen just yet, but Bekah leaves with a well-deserved raise. We turn to a stack of applications for two new editorial positions: a community and public health reporter and an arts and culture reporter.

Strong candidates from near and far have applied, and editors quickly agree on seven candidates selected for in-person interviews. More news on that front soon.

By day’s end members of the Rivard Report‘s editorial and business staffs are at Frank in Southtown, raising a glass to toast our fifth anniversary of publication. What began as a two-person blog launched by Monika Maeckle, my wife, and I on Feb. 13, 2012, has grown into a nonprofit website that attracts a few hundred thousand readers each month, an audience that continues to grow as our journalism grows with it.

Membership and philanthropic support is growing, too, and has been since the day we became a nonprofit 501(c)(3) at the close of 2015.  If you’re unaware of that growth, take a minute to scroll through the increasing number of individual and business supporters who are making our work possible.

We hope you will use the occasion of our fifth anniversary and our nonprofit status, which makes your contribution tax-deductible, to join as a member. We have many donors who contribute $5 or $10 a month on a sustaining basis, as well as many others who have the resources to support us at higher levels.

Every member counts.

There are now 115 state and urban nonprofit news sites in the country, all organized under the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Nonprofit News. Many of them were started by journalists who left newspapers or magazines and are finding a new way to deliver news, information and community service.

No single entity will replace the talent-rich newsrooms that served cities like San Antonio in the heyday of U.S. newspapers, but those days are gone for good, and people no longer look for single sources of news. Readers get local, national and international, business, sports, and arts and cultural news from a myriad choice of specialty websites. The general interest exceptions with deep offerings – The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times – can be counted on one hand.

With a staff of 12 that we hope eventually grows to 20 people, we are on track or ahead of plan to build what we believe will be an enduring, community-centered source of credible news and commentary that lives on longer than the span of my career as an active journalist.

Many of you have attended Rivard Report events, such as the Mayoral Town Hall Debate that took place at the Pearl Stable last week. Members make it possible for us to organize and host such gatherings where we mix social networking with public policy forums. We have held such events in just about every corner of the city, from Alamo Ranch in the far northwest to Alamo Brewery on the near-Eastside. There will be many more such opportunities and we hope you will sign up and attend one.

How did we get from Feb. 13, 2012, to Feb. 13, 2017? There are simply too many people to thank, but they know who they are, and they know we will never forget their financial support or their encouragement, advice and helping hands. We do have an outstanding board of directors that guided us into the nonprofit world and lent instant credibility to our cause. And we have our first two editorial employees, Managing Editor Iris Dimmick, and Photo Editor Scott Ball, who have been here since our early years, leading our growing editorial team.

I’ll wish all of our readers a Happy Valentine’s Day, and suggest that one way to make the occasion a truly memorable one is to take a few minutes now and become a member of the Rivard Report.

Everyone at the Rivard Report shares this commitment: We want to be the leading media platform that connects and engages the people of San Antonio with lively, trusted news and commentary. We want to help build a better informed, better educated and more prosperous community, a San Antonio that our children and talented people from elsewhere see as a great place to live, work and play.

We can’t do it alone. We need substantial public support and we need a strong, tested, committed board of directors. That’s why, as we celebrate our fourth anniversary this Saturday, Feb. 13, we have become a nonprofit. And that’s why we are proud to introduce the community leaders who have agreed to help us achieve our mission.

By 2015, four years after it was conceived, the Rivard Report was at a crossroads. The San Antonio news site — founded by Robert Rivard, who spent 14 years as the top editor of the San Antonio Express-News, and his wife Monika Maeckle — was looking to grow and to provide more local coverage of public health, education, and arts and culture. But its advertising- and sponsorship-based business model wasn’t really working.

“It was enough to pay my advertising director, my photo editor, and my one reporter, but it wasn’t enough to pay myself, and certainly it wasn’t enough to go out and grow,” said Rivard, who began planning the site in late 2011 and first published in February 2012.

“After three or four years, I used to joke with people that we were a ‘no-profit.’ We weren’t in the red, but we weren’t in the black either. We were constantly taking money as it came in and paying it out as quickly as we got it.”

Rivard sought out potential investors among his contacts in San Antonio, but he wasn’t able to attract interest because the Rivard Report would never have been able to generate the level of traffic it needed to sustain an advertising-based business.

“I didn’t see an exit strategy,” said John “Chico” Newman, Jr., one of the people Rivard approached. Instead, many Newman and others suggested that the Report become a nonprofit.

In late 2015, the Rivard Report completed the transition to 501(c)3 status. Since then, the site has been able to grow its staff, increase its coverage, and attract new sources of funding.

“If he didn’t [go nonprofit], he was probably going to burn out, and then San Antonio would lose the Rivard Report,” said Newman, who is now vice chairman of the Rivard Report board. (Newman is also a supporter of other nonprofit news organizations, including the Center for Public Integrity, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and The Texas Tribune.) “To recreate it would have been prohibitively expensive for even the most generous philanthropic organization. These things are hard to start. They’re hard to keep going, but they’re really hard to start.”

The Rivard Report now has annual revenue of about $1 million, Rivard said, but needs to reach $2 million to be truly sustainable. In 2016, foundation and philanthropic support accounted for about 40 percent of the site’s income, advertising for another 40 percent, and membership for 20 percent.

Rivard locked down three-year commitments for annual donations of $100,000 from Newman and his wife Ann through the John and Florence Newman Foundation and from Charles Butt, the owner of the San Antonio-based H-E-B grocery store chain. (H-E-B is Rivard Report’s largest advertiser as well.) Support is also coming from a number of other local foundations; Rivard said he hasn’t “quite cracked the code” on national foundation money yet.

Rivard sees membership as the key to the site’s long-term stability. The site signed up about 1,000 members (defined simply as people who make some donation) in its first year as a nonprofit and hired a membership coordinator last year; it’s already held some membership events and plans more, including salon-type gatherings with city leaders.

Rivard and his team look toward nonprofit stalwarts such as Voice of San Diego, MinnPost, and The Texas Tribune for guidance and inspiration.
“The Texas Tribune has been incredibly generous — not only in their sharing of methods and lessons learned, but they share their content completely free,” said Katy Flato, the executive director of the San Antonio Book Festival and a board member for both The Texas Tribune and the Rivard Report. “That has been very helpful to the Rivard Report for a bigger spread of subject matter and relevancy.”

While the Tribune’s reporting enables the Report to cover what’s happening in Austin, the site has been staffing up to expand its coverage in San Antonio.

The Report has a staff of 10 full-time and regular contractors, as well as a larger stable of freelancers. Rivard is looking to hire reporters to cover public health, arts and culture, and business and technology; ultimately, he’d like to have a staff of 15 to 20 people, with three or four of those individuals working on the business side. In 2016, the Report published about 3,000 stories, up from 1,800 in 2015.

Spanish is the primary language spoken at home in 40.5 percent of San Antonio households, according to the U.S. census bureau. The Rivard Report has published some Spanish-language coverage, but Rivard said he’d like to see more of the site’s reporting in Spanish as well.

“For those of us of a certain age, newspapers were part of our every day, and that’s what got us into this business. We’d like to see them survive, but we recognize that they’ll never be what they once were,” Rivard said. Nowadays, “people want niche. It’s a model that fits its time and place — who knows where we’ll be five years from now.”

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BETH FRERKING


JENNA MALLETTE


Robert Rivard, Publisher, rivard@rivardreport.com
Elizabeth Frerking, Editor-in-Chief, beth@rivardreport.com
Iris Dimmick, Managing Editor, iris@rivardreport.com
Wendy Lane Cook, Copy Editor & Writing Coach, wendy@rivardreport.com
Hanna Oberhofer, Production Editor, hanna@rivardreport.com
Jenna Price Mallette, Chief Operating Officer, jenna@rivardreport.com
Katy Silva, Advertising & Marketing Manager, katy@rivardreport.com
Mason Stark, Membership Coordinator, mason@rivardreport.com
Scott Ball, Photo Editor, scott@rivardreport.com
Bonnie Arbittier, Photographer, bonnie@rivardreport.com
Jeffrey Sullivan, Reporter, jeff@rivardreport.com
Shari Biediger, Business Reporter, shari@rivardreport.com
Roseanna Garza, Health Reporter, roseanna@rivardreport.com
Nicholas Frank, Arts & Culture Reporter, nicholas@rivardreport.com
Emily Royall, Data Director, emily@rivardreport.com

The Rivard Report Staff:
Robert Rivard
Robert Rivard

Publisher Robert Rivard, former newspaper editor, columnist and author has called San Antonio home for more than two decades. Follow Robert on Twitter @rivardreport or on Facebook. He can be reached at rivard@rivardreport.com.





Iris Dimmick
Iris Dimmick

Managing Editor Iris Dimmick moved to San Antonio in February 2012. Iris was born and raised in Grand Junction, Colo. and received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Central Washington University. Contact her at iris@rivardreport.com.





Jenna Price Mallette
Jenna Price Mallette

Jenna Price Mallette is the director of development for the Rivard Report. Before joining the team, Jenna worked with the Trinity University College Advising Corps and Robot Creative. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and a minor in Psychology from Trinity University. Reach her at jenna@rivardreport.com.



Katy Silva
Katy Silva

Katy Silva is the advertising and marketing manager for the Rivard Report. She previously served as the director of marketing and communications at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, as well as the marketing coordinator at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. You can contact her at katy@rivardreport.com.



Scott Ball
Scott Ball

Scott Ball is the Rivard Report’s photo editor. You can contact him at scott@rivardreport.com. His photography can be found in almost every story published on the Rivard Report these days and more can be found at www.scottstephenball.com



Bonnie Arbittier
Bonnie Arbittier

Bonnie Arbittier joined our team in February 2017 after moving to Texas to intern at the Victoria Advocate. Following an internship with Annie Leibovitz, she completed a Fine Arts degree at the University of Pennsylvania. You can see her portfolio at www.bonniearbittier.com and her musings on her Instagram @bonniearbittier.




Wendy Lane Cook

Wendy Lane Cook spent more than a decade at the Associated Press with bureaus in Texas and California, covering everything from state elections to natural disasters to the Olympic Games. From there she moved to The Washington Post. After stepping away from full-time journalism for some time, she became editor and writing coach at the Rivard Report in January 2017.



Hanna Oberhofer
Hanna Oberhofer

Before moving to San Antonio in 2004, Hanna Oberhofer was a competitive rhythmic gymnast in her native Austria. She earned degrees from St. Mary’s University and the Texas State Graduate College before joining the Rivard Report as production editor in June 2016. Follow her on Instagram at @hanna_inn_sa



Roseanna Garza
Roseanna Garza

Health Reporter Roseanna Garza has a bachelor’s degree in English literature and composition and a minor in sociology from St. Mary’s University and a master’s in clinical mental health counseling from the UTSA, where she went on to pursue clinical licensure as a licensed professional counselor.



Emily Royall
Emily Royall

Data Director Emily Royall is a technologist and urban planner focusing on integrating technology and urban development in meaningful, ethical, and sustainable ways. Emily holds a BS in Neuroscience from UT Austin and an MA in Urban Planning from MIT.






Iris Gonzalez

Iris Gonzalez, a first generation Cuban American and former defense research analyst, covers technology, cybersecurity, bioscience, and military and veterans’ affairs. She’s also a docent at the San Antonio Museum of Art.






Shari Biediger

Shari Biediger, our business reporter, has earned recognition for her writing from the International Association of Business Communicators, the Educational Press Association, Public Relations Society of America, and AdFed. She has worked for theRecorder-Times, San Antonio Bar Association, and USAA.





Freelance Team:
Edmond Ortiz
Edmond Ortiz

Edmond Ortiz, a lifelong San Antonian, is a freelance reporter/editor who has worked with the San Antonio Express-News and Prime Time Newspapers. He can be reached at eortiz@journalist.com.







Mike Monroe
Mike Monroe

Mike Monroe is a longtime, award-winning NBA and Spurs reporter who recently retired from the Express-News and now frequenltly contributes to the Rivard Report.





Cherise Rohr-Allegrini
Cherise Rohr-Allegrini

Cherise Rohr-Allegrini, PhD, MPH, is the San Antonio Program Director for The Immunization Partnership. Following years of tropical disease research on vector-borne diseases, she was the epidemiologist for the San Antonio Metro Health Department, Public Health Preparedness and later the Communicable Disease Program Manager with the Department of State Health Services, Region 8.



Rachel Chaney
Rachel Chaney

Rachel Chaney is a photographer and native Texan. You can reach her at rachel@rachelchaney.com.







Mitch Hagney
Mitch Hagney

Mitch Hagney is a writer and hydroponic farmer in downtown San Antonio. Hagney is CEO of LocalSprout.



– Rick Casey, an acclaimed former newspaper columnist and KLRN-TV public affairs talk show host in San Antonio, will join the Rivard Report as a contributing editor with the launch of a weekly podcast offering analysis and insights on local news stories and the players behind the news.

– Brendan Gibbons, a prize-winning environmental reporter formerly at the San Antonio Express-News and the​ ​Scranton​ ​Times-Tribune,​ will cover the environment, energy, and water issues.

– Emily Donaldson, a former Community Impact correspondent in Houston and Austin, will report on the area’s Pre-K-12 schools and students, with a focus on schools in underserved areas of the city, education trends, and the city’s institutions of higher education.

Richard T. Schlosberg III, chairman of the recently established Rivard Report Board of Directors, has led a life that resists easy summary. He’s a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy who flew more than 200 combat support missions in Vietnam and, years later, was a founding director of the academy’s endowment. A plinth and bronze plaque bearing his name and countenance stands on the campus Mall of Heroes.

To journalists of my generation, Schlosberg was the last great publisher of the Los Angeles Times in the 1990s, which followed stints as publisher of the Denver Post and leadership positions with San Antonio-based Harte-Hanks Communications.

In his subsequent nonprofit career in the Silicon Valley, he served as president and CEO of the Packard Foundation, one of the nation’s largest charitable foundations, and later as chairman of the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Read Kaiser Health News if you want to connect with an online news organization that is truly excellent and serves as one of several role models for our team.) He has served on the boards of eBay, Edison International, and the Smithsonian. I could go on.

A plaque honoring Richard Schlosberg III. Photo by William Moll.
A plaque honoring Richard T. Schlosberg III as a distinguished alumnus of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Photo by William Moll.

I’d rather tell the story of how Dick, as he is known to friends and colleagues, and I first met at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in 1978. He was a few years removed from military service and Harvard Business School, and was the newspaper’s young general manager, working under legendary publisher Ed Harte Jr. I was a long-haired rookie reporter up from Brownsville who had somehow convinced Robert Rhodes, the executive editor, and Harte to let me travel to Mexico to cover the historic visit of newly-elected Pope John Paul II.

Rhodes had told me the newspaper didn’t send reporters farther than the Rio Grande Valley or Austin. Seeking to bolster my case, I proposed riding second-class buses through Mexico, living off a modest cash advance, following the pope and filing daily stories to our readers, many of them Catholic, by Telex. Finally worn down by my frequent office visits, Harte and Rhodes acquiesced and sent me to the general manager’s office to discuss finances.

It was immediately evident that Schlosberg, dressed in a business suit and still sporting a military haircut, was less than enthusiastic about entrusting company money to a 25-year-old kid heading south of the border on a bus. We ended up having a good conversation and to his credit, Dick decided to take a risk and make it happen. He did inform me with the air of a military officer comfortable issuing orders that my second-class bus idea was ridiculous and that I’d be traveling on company business by air. I walked out of the office with $500, more cash than I had ever held, and a corporate credit card for emergencies. I’ll never forget that moment in 1978: Dick gave me my first credit card and I made the most of it, leaving on a journey that would eventually stretch to a reporting career in Latin America and around the world for Newsweek magazine.

Dick and his wife Kathy eventually moved back to Texas and San Antonio in 2004 after their years in California. San Antonio is where their two grown children had settled, and it was the city where Dick and Kathy raised them when Dick served as president of Harte-Hanks newspaper operations before he left for Denver and then LA. Over the last decade, Kathy has been a major supporter and former vice chair of Communities in Schools here, and one of several board members who helped introduce me to one of the most effective anti-dropout programs in the country.

I had arrived in San Antonio with my family much earlier, having returned to Texas in 1989. Reconnecting with Dick more than 25 years after our first meeting brought me full circle with him. After all, I am still asking for money to underwrite good reporting. It’s an honor to call Dick the Rivard Report chairman. He presides over a blue ribbon board that could yet grow, but already is strong.

John Newman Jr.
John "Chico" Newman Jr.
John “Chico” Newman Jr.

John “Chico” Newman Jr. is the Rivard Report vice chairman and the president of the John and Florence Newman Foundation. I consider him the quietest philanthropist in San Antonio. His family foundation’s gifts and contributions never come with press releases. Over the years, Chico and his wife Ann have supported various nonprofit media, ranging from the Washington D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity to the Austin-based Texas Tribune to San Antonio-based Texas Public Radio, where Ann previously served as chairwoman, and KLRN-TV, San Antonio’s public television station.

They’ve also been instrumental to the well-being of our city’s public library system and the San Antonio Public Library Foundation. The Newmans were an important part of a neighborhood effort in Monte Vista that led to the purchase and renovation of the Shook Avenue house where the foundation offices are now located. The Newmans also contributed to the restoration of the Landa Gardens at the Landa Library by supporting the Landa Gardens Alliance, and Ann Van Pelt and Jill Torbert.

After my wife Monika and I moved back to Texas in 1989, our two boys attended Cambridge Elementary School in Alamo Heights. As the newest members of the PTA, we were drafted to lead a fundraising effort to renovate the school playground, which was ringed by a falling fence and a dilapidated, vacant building that sat right in the middle of the space where small children played at recess. The swings and other recreational equipment were in poor condition. The Newmans gave the lead gift that led to removal of the building, new playground equipment and safe fencing. In a small municipality with very little public green space, it was a  new day for the Cambridge school children.

Chico, now a longtime friend, has bought and sold a number of businesses over the years and is one the best read and most engaging thinkers I’ve come to know. That was evident in last week’s office mail, which included a clipping he sent from the Financial Times about William Playfair, the 19th century Scot inventor of data graphics and spread sheets. It was a great read and a not-so-subtle reminder that we have a long ways to go in improving our own data presentations.

The Newman Foundation has led the Rivard Report’s conversion to 501(c)3 status. Chico’s commitment to fund us at the $100,000 level for a three-year period is, literally, the foundation of our efforts to attract tax-deductible donations. Charles Butt, chairman and CEO of H-E-B, has matched the Newman Foundation gift with his own $100,000 contribution and three-year commitment. Charles advised me in late 2011, even before the Rivard Report first appeared, to become a nonprofit. He couldn’t understand back then why I didn’t take that advice, and he has been kind enough not to remind me of that conversation as we now complete the transition four years later.

H-E-B has been one of the Rivard Report’s two biggest supporters with its advertising and sponsorship through our first four years of publication. Our very first supporter was Rackspace Co-Founder and Chairman Graham Weston and two other entities he has established in San Antonio,  Geekdom and the 80/20 Foundation.

Monika Maeckle, my wife, and I owe a special debt of gratitude to Graham. He convinced us that we could make the Rivard Report work if we partnered with people in his new ecosystem of programmers, web designers, app builders and other startups. We established a small office in the newly opened Geekdom, started by Weston and Nick Longo, and stepped into a whole new world. It’s the only world the rest of the Rivard Report team has ever known. Geekdom, now located in the newly-renovated historic Rand Building and under the leadership of Lorenzo Gomez, remains a vital supporter.

The combined support of H-E-B and various Weston enterprises has led to many other supporters, small and large, signing on as advertisers and sponsors. We are using their continued support and the newest contributions to expand our staff, hire more freelance contributors, and broaden our journalistic and geographic reach in the city.

Lew Moorman
Lew Moorman, former Rackspace president.
Lew Moorman

Lew Moorman is the former president of Rackspace, where he still serves as a member of the board of directors. As the company’s former chief strategic officer and then president, Lew led Rackspace into the Cloud, at the time a risky and dramatic pivot that few others saw or necessarily agreed with at the time. It’s easy to see in hindsight how right and how important that move was, but back then? What would have become of Rackspace if it hadn’t pivoted?

Lew is the treasurer of the Rivard Report.

He also is a founder and driving force behind Tech Bloc, which has been nothing short of a political phenomenon. In the space of less than one year, having been born out of frustration as Uber and Lyft pulled out of San Antonio, Tech Bloc’s founders have recruited nearly 2,000 members in San Antonio and made them an active force at City Hall and other levels of local government. Every officeholder in South Texas and in our Washington delegation knows Tech Bloc, and respects its engagement and activism. Tech Bloc members have become involved with staff and officeholders at a working level to contribute their expertise and resources to advance change in the city.

Individuals like Moorman who have achieved great success in the tech world, I have learned, are comfortable with disruption and driven to identify problems that can be solved with new technology. Much of Lew’s time now is spent investing in and advising Internet companies, but he is at work on a new venture he expects to announce soon. He has that unique DNA that drives people to start and build things. It is infectious, even for a onetime print journalist.

Schlosberg, Newman and Moorman share a lot in common. All three serve on the board of Texas Biomed here in San Antonio, which is part of an ecosystem and concentration of brain power in the city that we believe is undervalued and under covered in the media. Schlosberg is chairman, Newman is vice chair and Moorman is a member of the executive committee. All three are experienced leaders with strong business backgrounds. All three are invested in this city and the health and welfare of its people and economy. We are fortunate to have such a brain trust as board officers guiding us through our next phase of development.

Our Directors – Katy Flato
San Antonio Book Festival Director and Co-founder Katy Flato.
Katy Flato

I first met Katy Chadwick in 1989 when she was living in Austin, working as the managing editor of Texas Monthly, where she had risen through the ranks over a 10-year career. Katy had previously started and been the founding editor of a small, new shelter magazine, Domain, owned by the same publisher. A story on a young, talented San Antonio architectural firm named Lake/Flato brought her here, and the rest is history. Marriage to the firm’s co-founder Ted Flato brought her permanently to San Antonio shortly after my family arrived. We have been fast friends ever since.

Katy Flato is best known in San Antonio as a founder and executive director of the San Antonio Book Festival, which is just a few months younger than the Rivard Report, turning four years old on April 2. Like Moorman, she, too, is a builder. Book festival attendance has grown from 4,000 in year one to 10,000 in year two to 16,000 last year. It’s added a major literary and educational happening to the downtown calendar that is free and open to the public. Katy’s incredible support of books, reading and the city’s public library system spans 25 years of volunteer service and financial support for the San Antonio Public Library Foundation Board, which launched the Book Festival as its signature program in 2013.

Before then, literary fans will remember Copyright Texas, an annual gathering of noted Texas authors at the Central Library who came here for readings and other events. That, too, was a Katy Flato initiative. Through such programs, the Library Foundation and its volunteers have raised $35 million in badly-needed funds for our public libraries.

Book festivals in cities like Austin and Miami have grown to become multi-day events that attract tens of thousands of people and generate tens of million of dollars in economic activity. The only thing that will stop the San Antonio Book Festival from continuing to grow by leaps and bounds is insufficient funding. Given enough support, it could become the biggest downtown cultural event of the year. Our book festival has many who deserve credit for its success, but it would have never happened without Katy, who had little encouragement or financial support at the outset, obstacles which did not deter her. That’s the energy and spirit we want to capture at the Rivard Report with Katy on the board.

Katy also serves on the board of the Texas Tribune, which sets the national standard for nonprofit media, and the board of Texas Public Radio here. Given her magazine editing background, experience in start-ups, and service on behalf of other important non-profit organizations she will connect the Rivard Report in many new ways in the community.

There are now more than 100 members nationwide of the nonprofit Institute for Nonprofit News, including the Rivard Report, with digital startups forming in cities everywhere as more news is shared online and print media continues to diminish. The Texas Tribune is considered best in class. Having a board director who serves on that board is an invaluable connection. Texas Public Radio, with its national and international news, and local programming such as The Source, is part of the ecosystem we see ourselves helping to expand.

Dan Goodgame
Dan Goodgame
Dan Goodgame

Dan Goodgame has the deepest journalistic resume of anyone I know in San Antonio. Today he is the vice president of executive communications for Rackspace, but if I flash back more than 35 years ago when I lived and worked in Central America, Goodgame was a star reporter and familiar page one byline in the Miami Herald, then one of the best newspapers in the country with tens of thousands of daily readers throughout Latin America. Goodgame went on to a distinguished reporting career in the Middle East and then joined Time magazine, which dominated the English-language newsweekly market.

After a stint as West Coast Bureau Chief, Goodgame became Time’s White House correspondent, one of the the most elevated reporting positions in the nation’s capitol, and later became the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, at the time one of the most powerful journalism posts in the country. He co-authored a book, “Marching in Place: The Presidency of George (H.W.) Bush.” He was eventually tapped to become editor-in-chief of Fortune Small Business, a Time Inc. magazine that specialized in covering small and medium-sized business and startups. Under Dan’s leadership, FSB grew rapidly in readership and profit, both in print and online.

Rackspace and Graham Weston were the subject of a profile in the magazine, and that connected Goodgame to San Antonio. When Goodgame retired from Time Inc. and began working as a consultant for media and tech companies, Weston invited him to do some work for Rackspace. That invitation led to Dan moving to San Antonio and assuming his current leadership role. His ability to explain Rackspace and its businesses to people who do not speak fluent tech is just one of his many skills. His global political, cultural (and culinary) fluency makes him the kind of citizen San Antonio needs to raise its ambitions.

Dan and I share another important connection beyond our distant Time-Newsweek rivalry. Two years ago I learned of his son Michael’s interest in writing and his editorial work at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, one of the country’s best small liberal arts colleges. Michael already had been published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and we reposted one of his commentaries in early 2014. Michael was selected as our summer intern and we suggested he do some generation-specific stories for us while still on campus.

Michael was a member of CUT, the school’s varsity Ultimate Frisbee team — an unlikely power that regularly won national championships against teams from the nation’s largest universities. We suggested that he write an article explaining to an older generation what an athletic, fast-paced, fast-growing sport Ultimate had become.

Two years ago this month, Michael was on his way to the Minneapolis airport with his Ultimate teammates to play in a tournament in Palo Alto, CA. Amid a snowstorm and icy road conditions, the driver lost control of the vehicle, which collided head-on with a tractor-trailer, killing Michael and two other passengers. (Read more: Michael Goodgame, the Young Journalist We Never Got to Know.) The tragic loss of Michael will always be an important part of the Rivard Report story.

Dan’s presence on the board means having a seasoned and empathetic editor sitting at my side whenever I need one, someone who believes in our mission and knows from experience what it takes to do the job. His work on the corporate side of a tech company gives him added perspective. Dan sees stories from all sides, which is how we want to see them.

Laura Saldivar Luna
Laura Saldivar Luna
Laura Saldivar Luna

Laura Saldivar Luna is the executive director of Teach for America in San Antonio. She is, indeed, “the embodiment of what we want to achieve in San Antonio,” as the TFA website notes.

Laura is the poster woman for Brain Gain, the drive to bring back the generations of talented young people who left to find opportunity they couldn’t find in San Antonio. She is a graduate of Jefferson High School who attended Georgetown University in Washington D.C.

I interviewed her for a program for KLRN-TV a few years ago. We met in the stately, ornate Jefferson library, where I gained a special appreciation of Laura, her local roots, and how far she and her sister had traveled in life.

After graduation, Laura served in the TFA corps in the Rio Grande Valley, teaching English as a Second Language students for two years. She then accepted a position with the national nonprofit in New York. In 2010, Teach for America was brought to San Antonio, an effort initiated and led by Charles Butt. Shortly afterwards, Laura was recruited back to her hometown to lead that effort.

That meant forming a nonprofit board, hiring a small staff, and leading a corps of 150 teachers in the inner city school districts. I’ve admired Laura from the moment of her arrival, and have watched her successfully work with young teachers, district officials, and her own talented and committed board of directors. She has built the local TFA presence into something it’s hard to imagine San Antonio’s inner city schools living without now.

Improved education outcomes is a goal all of us share, and giving readers insightful education reporting that goes beyond school board meetings or the latest headline is key to helping people understand where San Antonio schools are succeeding and where more needs to be done to affect better outcomes. Laura will be an invaluable guide and expert for us.

I serve as secretary of the board, so at this juncture we are a seven-person board of directors. There is a constant debate in governance circles about the right number of board directors. Most boards have too many directors, some of whom serve in name only. Board diversity is critical, as is building a board where every single member is a significant contributor. Many of the INN’s members have established community advisory boards. That is under discussion here. Given the amount of administrative work required to transition from for-profit to nonprofit, we are moving forward purposefully, knowing we can’t do everything in the first month.

First, all of us here need to put the first paragraph of this story into action. Our prospects are bright, and we believe San Antonio will be a better city with a growing Rivard Report. We need your help to make it happen.