Mission Note

After a long history of covering City Hall, Travis County and the like, the Austin Monitor stopped publishing in October 2025 to pursue a new project: Austin Current. For the foreseeable future, the Monitor will live on as a searchable archive, open to anyone who needs it. We invite our longtime readers and casual fans […]

We have written several exciting new chapters this year, but this one might be the biggest: The Austin Monitor will become the Austin Current.  The Austin Current is a bold, new local newsroom built to keep pace with Austin’s explosive growth. Our mission is simple: deliver journalism that is innovative in approach, uncompromising in standards […]

We are excited to announce that Melissa Barragán Taboada will be the inaugural editor-in-chief for our new, expanded local newsroom launching this fall.  “I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to help launch this newsroom and to be part of building a community-centered publication from the ground up,” Melissa said about her new role. “Austin is […]

Today we’re humbled and honored to share the next chapter of our mission: The Austin Monitor has joined the Texas Tribune in a strategic acquisition designed to expand local news coverage in Austin. This partnership will combine the Monitor’s deep roots in Austin reporting with the Tribune’s award-winning journalism and infrastructure. Together, we’ll build a […]

Ask any Austinite what the most frustrating thing about living here is, and you likely get a wide gamut of rapid-fire thoughtful, personal and fiery responses. There is no shortage of complex issues that inspire impassioned reactions from us locals. But, rather than write off the grousing as a symptom of a city riddled with […]

Running a nonprofit news organization is both hard and easy in this day and age.  On the hard side, I’m not exaggerating when I say that the media industry at large is in a transformative period that will ultimately lead to its evolution or extinction. Headlines abound every week about the loss of journalism jobs […]

The Austin Monitor’s first big step forward came nearly two years ago when we removed our paywall and made our articles and resources free and fully accessible to the entire community. This was a big change for our small but mighty news organization and, frankly, it was risky.  Ultimately, we made this bold decision because […]

One year ago we removed our paywall and set a new course for our organization. For a small nonprofit news organization, this was a big change.  We knew our in-depth and independent reporting would be the throughline and engine for this transition, so we felt solid on that front. But there were plenty of other […]

July was a special month for the Austin Monitor on numerous fronts. Since making the bold and important decision to remove our paywall at the end of the 2021, we’ve reached nearly 150,000 new readers. Though early into our new model, we see this growth as a great sign for further elevating our impact. It’s […]

Even though our roots go back to the mid-1990s, the Austin Monitor officially launched as a nonprofit in 2013. To some, that may not seem like a long time ago, while to others (myself included) it feels like a different era. Strong and enduring nonprofits are constantly assessing the environment they operate in, and at […]