The Return of the MOLLY

Last week, the Texas Observer held its annual MOLLY gala and fundraiser, a tradition—named, of course, for the inimitable Molly Ivins—that was briefly interrupted last year as the organization scrambled to save itself from a near-closure but that has returned in triumphant, and poignant, form this year. In its 70th year of publication, the Observer is reestablishing its financial footing, growing its community, and, as always, publishing some of the most important journalism in the state and country. Below are a few of the highlights from the 2024 MOLLY.

Condensed remarks from the Observer’s Interim Executive Director Loren Lynch:

The MOLLYs have become a defining element of the Texas Observer, something that I know many people in this room look forward to each year. It’s an opportunity for us to come together as a community, a chance to celebrate in a moment when things worth  celebrating may feel harder and harder to find.   

Speaking of celebrating, before I get too much further, there’s actually a few people in particular I’d like to recognize. If you’re currently a staff member at the Texas Observer, could you please stand up? These folks right here are a big reason why we’re all here today to come together for the MOLLYs. And actually, I’d like to just see something here quick. I’m going to shout out a few other people. If everyone could please stay standing as we do this. If you are currently a member of the Texas Democracy Foundation board, can you please stand? Now anyone who has ever been a TDF board member? How about everyone who served on the Molly host committee, this year or any previous year please stand. And lastly, if you’ve ever worked at the Texas Observer, been a fellow or intern, if you’ve ever freelanced for the Observer at any time, please stand.

Eight people are currently employed full time at the Texas Observer, and they’ve fought for us to be here. But there’s the saying, it takes a village—this is the community that makes the Texas Observer, right here standing up in this room. We’ve all benefited from the Observer continuing to publish for the last 70 years—and I’m willing to bet that if I asked anyone who isn’t already standing if you’ve felt like you’ve benefited from the Observer, this whole room might be standing.

We’re all here because this organization means something to a lot of people. The impact of reporting is felt, and, in Texas, deeply impactful reporting that “hews hard to the truth” is vital beyond words. I’m deeply grateful for all of you here tonight, helping to ensure the community we’re seeing in this room continues to expand.

The Observer presented its MOLLY National Journalism Prize, which honors the best in American journalism, to Alicia Inez Guzman of Searchlight New Mexico for her story “Buried Secrets, Poisoned Bodies”—a gripping literary investigation into the lingering effects of atomic bomb development and the life of a particular woman from the same tiny town as the writer. An excerpt from the story:

A kind of armor protects the lab’s nuclear secrets. For that reason alone, I have little faith that I will be able to identify her—the anonymous Trucheña with 60 times more plutonium in her body than any other New Mexican autopsied in this hair-raising study. But I keep looking. Maybe it’s that I believe finding her can reaffirm, in some small measure, her humanity...

Read the full piece here.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio, a mother who lost her daughter in the 2022 Uvalde school shooting, and Tamir Kalifa, a photographer who embedded in that southwest Texas town, shared powerful words about the importance of longform ethical journalism with the MOLLY audience. The pair collaborated on a photo essay in the most recent issue of the Observer. A sampling of Mata-Rubio’s essay:

Two weeks after I lost Lexi, and three days before her funeral, I agreed to testify before Congress about the effects of gun violence. I don’t recall making a conscious decision to actively join the gun violence prevention movement, but, looking back, I’ve always been a member. I have always prioritized children over some civilians’ desire to own high-powered weapons of war...

Full photo essay here.

Condensed remarks from Interim Editor-in-Chief Gus Bova:

I wish I had the time to tell y’all about each member of the Observer’s small but mighty editorial team—but I understand we have a tight program and are attempting to pull off the first ever banquet in history that didn’t take way too long. So just know that these folks are some of the finest investigative and magazine journalists working in the country. Please check their bylines, come up to me after, or email me sometime, so I can rave to you about them.

Today, I’m speaking as the Observer’s interim editor-in-chief. And the feeling is surreal—mostly because, a little over a year ago, I didn’t think that I or y’all would be here at all. Just over a year ago, many of you likely heard, the Observer nearly shut down just shy of its 70th anniversary. 

The journalism industry, nonprofits included, is in crisis, and layoffs are everywhere you look these days. But the Observer is the only place I know where the workers who make the magazine that each of you has right now said, “Wait, let us try, let us really see what the people think.” And not just one big donor but thousands of small donors came together—support from across the state, nation, and world—to, along with board members who continue to serve today, save the place. Our subscriptions soared, and we made it through what was certainly not the first existential crisis the Observer has faced over seven decades.

I started at the Observer in 2016 as an idealistic intern, working part-time at a migrant shelter called Casa Marianella while trying to somehow break into journalism. Eight years later, I’m still here. It’s my first, and only, journalism job—and I’ve come to understand it’s one of the best gigs going. When you work here long enough, you start to feel a certain weight—the weight of all the people who poured their sweat and tears into this place before you, the people who averted the crises of the years and decades prior so that you could be here at all. So, when we almost folded last year, I couldn’t just think of the fact that my wife Marina and I had just bought a house—or that she was five months pregnant with our son Gino. I had to think of the Observer too.

The weight, in part, is the knowledge that should the Observer ever go away, there is no other Observer coming to take its place. The capitalist free market, and our Republican state government, do not require the existence of a progressive-minded investigative magazine in Texas. Quite the opposite. We exist because of the will and generosity of Texans like y’all, and many like Molly who’ve left us, who have persisted in the crazy belief that this state can be something else, something better. The weight that I feel, as the interim editor, is the knowledge that the Observer is irreplaceable.

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