Latest news with #RonnieDugger
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Ronnie Dugger, trailblazing founder of The Texas Observer, dies at 95
Ronnie Dugger, the founding editor of The Texas Observer once referred to as the 'godfather of progressive journalism in Texas,' died Tuesday in Austin. He was 95. His death was related to Alzheimer's disease complications, said his daughter, New York Times health and science editor Celia W. Dugger. Dugger launched the Observer in 1954, when he was just 24 and a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He wanted to create not just a newspaper, but something to serve 'the rolling, ongoing community of liberal and left, radical, some centrist and conservative, decent people, still moored in this still oligarchical political hellhole, beautiful Texas,' he wrote in the Observer in 2014, recalling the time when the publication was created. He wrote the Observer's mission statement, which is still displayed on its website today: 'We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it.' Gus Bova, the Observer's editor-in-chief, described Dugger as a 'trailblazing journalist in Texas.' 'He insisted on covering stories that, in the 1950s, the major daily papers wouldn't touch. He drove around Texas in this broken-down little old car, finding stories of KKK violence in East Texas or issues faced by Mexican Americans in San Antonio or the border,' Bova said. 'Now we see journalism like then it was really something different that he started.' The Austin-based Observer has been awarded multiple national awards in its 71-year history. The New York Times Book Review once called it 'that outpost of reason in the Southwest.' In 2023, the publication almost shut down because of funding issues, but then it crowdsourced more than $300,000 and continued its operations. Ceila Dugger said 'journalism runs in the family.' Dugger's grandson, Max Bearak, also works at The New York Times. She said she was inspired to join the profession by her father's belief in the power of the press. 'Our house was just alive with people who were in the thick of Texas politics, trying to make this a better state,' she said. 'It was impossible not to be infected as a young person by all of that.' Dugger was known for his indefatigable work ethic. In a 1974 op-ed, Dugger's former colleague, historian Lawrence Goodwyn, reflected on how Dugger stood out from other young journalists, in their early thirties at the time, who were already worn out because of the high-paced reporting in Texas politics. Goodwyn recalled a conversation with one of them who said, 'I don't know how Dugger does it.' Jim Hightower, who was the Observer's editor in the 1970s, recalled that at that time, there was barely any coverage of progressive candidates in Texas. Dugger wanted to change that. 'His integrity was not sanctimonious. It was not some stiff concept to put on a honesty and truth,' he said. 'His belief in journalism that guided my own ever since is that you tell the truth. You tell what you see, what you hear, what you smell. And do so with as much liveliness as you possibly can.' Dugger was concerned with more than just Texas politics. He wrote biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan. And he was strongly against nuclear weapons, as reflected in his first book, 'Dark Star: Hiroshima Reconsidered in the Life of Claude Eatherly of Lincoln Park, Texas.' Bova said that up through last year, he was still talking about nuclear weapon threats, democracy and journalism, and would read The New York Times every morning. Outside of journalism, Dugger was passionate about Russian literature, loved reading, and 'wrote thousands of poems that were never published,' his daughter said. On top of all the national recognition Dugger received throughout his career, Joe Holley wrote in the Observer's obituary for Dugger, 'he will always be associated with the scrappy little Austin-based political journal created in his image.' Disclosure: New York Times and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
New York Times
27-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
Ronnie Dugger, Crusading Texas Journalist, Dies at 95
Ronnie Dugger, the crusading editor of a small but influential Texas journal who challenged presidents, corporations and America's privileged classes to face their responsibility for racism, poverty and the perils of nuclear war, died on Tuesday at an assisted living facility in Austin, Texas. He was 95. His daughter, Celia Dugger, the health and science editor of The New York Times, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease. Inspired by Thomas Paine's treatises on independence and human rights, Mr. Dugger was the founding editor, the publisher and an owner of The Texas Observer, a widely respected publication, based in Austin, that with few resources and a tiny staff took on powerful interests, exposed injustices with investigative reports and offered an urbane mix of political dissent, narrative storytelling and cultural criticism. In an anthology, 'Fifty Years of The Texas Observer' (2004), Mr. Dugger recalled that in 1954, when his weekly began, a gentlemen's agreement of silence on sensitive matters pervaded public discourse in the deeply conservative Lone Star State. 'We were as racist, segregated and anti-union as the Deep South from which most of our Anglo pioneers had emerged,' Mr. Dugger wrote, adding: 'Mexican Americans were a hopeless underclass concentrated in South Texas. Women could vote and did the dog work in the political campaigns, but they were also ladies to be protected, above all from power. Gays and lesbians were as objectionable as Communists. And the daily newspapers were as reactionary and dishonest a cynical gang as the First Amendment ever took the rap for.' In Mr. Dugger's 40-year tenure, The Observer set its sights not on objectivity but on accuracy, 'fairness' and 'moral seriousness.' It laced commentary into its reportage and addressed issues ignored by state newspapers, like the lynching and shooting of Black people in East Texas. It denounced anti-Communist witch hunts, opposed the Vietnam War and championed labor, civil rights and the environment. Investigative articles exposed corporate greed, political chicanery and government corruption. Many were picked up and expanded upon by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other mainstream publications. Some Observer disclosures led to government hearings, judicial reviews and legislative reforms, and won awards from press and legal groups. In 1955, Mr. Dugger wrote of two nightriders who stormed through a Black town in East Texas, spraying bullets into a school bus, houses and a cafe, where John Reese, a Black 16-year-old, was killed. Two white youths were arrested, but only one, who signed a confession, was tried, in 1957. Mr. Dugger covered the trial, which lasted one day. At the end, he reported, a defense lawyer told the jury, which was all white, 'This boy wanted to scare somebody and keep the niggers and the whites from going to school together — now that's the truth about it.' The jury ruled that the defendant had fired the fatal shot 'without malice' and recommended a suspended sentence. The judge agreed. With anemic circulation and advertising revenues, The Observer relied on donations and barely survived from year to year. But it became a home for outstanding writers like Molly Ivins, Willie Morris, Jim Hightower, Billy Lee Brammer and Kaye Northcott. Mr. Dugger covered many of the big stories, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. He rode in a press bus in the presidential motorcade and wrote an impressionist 7,000-word piece. 'Come now on the last voyage of Mr. Kennedy,' the article began. Then, in meticulous detail, Mr. Dugger told of the president's final day and his last moments as gunshots cracked across Dealey Plaza, Secret Service men scrambled and the president's car sped away to Parkland Memorial Hospital. 'Inside the hospital all was in chaos,' he related. Rumors flew. 'I first believed and comprehended that he was dead when I heard Doug Kiker of The New York Herald Tribune swearing bitterly and passionately, 'Goddamn the sonsabitches!'' Later, after doctors gave way to a priest for the last rites, a White House press secretary confirmed that the president was dead. Forrest Wilder, a former editor of The Observer and now a senior writer at Texas Monthly, said in an interview for this obituary in 2018 that Mr. Dugger was 'a man ahead of his time by 50 years, a Southerner who spoke up for gay rights and addressed nuclear annihilation long before those ideas were commonly discussed in Texas.' Mr. Dugger also wrote biographies of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan and a book on the pilot of a weather reconnaissance plane who gave the all-clear for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. He contributed articles to The Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Nation, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and other publications. Mr. Dugger taught at the Universities of Illinois and Virginia and at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. He lectured widely, advocating national health insurance, public funding of election campaigns, curbs on corporate power and stronger civil rights protections for racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But his most passionate theme was nuclear perils. Bill Moyers, in a blog post marking The Observer's 50th anniversary, suggested that Mr. Dugger's stewardship — as editor from 1954 to 1965, then as publisher until 1994, when he turned ownership over to the nonprofit Texas Democracy Foundation — would be his most lasting legacy. 'Not a day passes that I don't wish we could clone The Texas Observer, plant it smack dab in the center of the nation's capital and loose the spirit of Thomas Paine,' Mr. Moyers wrote. 'Paine was the journalist of the American Revolution whose pen shook the powerful and propertied, challenged the pretensions of the pious and privileged and exposed the sunshine patriots who turned against the revolutionary ideals of freedom, equality and justice. That spirit permeates The Texas Observer.' Ronald Edward Dugger was born in Chicago on April 16, 1930, to William and Mary (King) Dugger. His father was a bookkeeper. The family moved to San Antonio, where Ronnie and his brother, Roy, attended public schools. Fascinated with journalism, Ronnie began working at 13 as a sportswriter for The San Antonio Express-News. After graduating from Brackenridge High School in San Antonio in 1946, he attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he majored in government and economics, edited the student newspaper and earned a bachelor's degree with high honors in 1950. He then studied politics and economics at the University of Oxford in England for a year. His marriage in 1951 to Jean Williams, a teacher, ended in divorce. In 1982, he married Patricia Blake, a Time magazine editor. She died in 2010. In addition to his daughter, Celia, from his first marriage, Mr. Dugger is survived by a son, Gary, also from his first marriage, and six grandchildren. On Mr. Dugger's watch, The Observer's circulation remained small, between 6,000 and 12,000, but its readers included congressmen, legislators, and community and business leaders. It morphed from a tabloid weekly into a biweekly in 1962, and later into a bimonthly magazine, but it kept its crusading character. Mr. Dugger ran for the United States Senate twice — in 1966 in Texas as an independent (he dropped out before the balloting) and in 2000 in New York, where he narrowly lost a race for the Green Party nomination. His book 'Dark Star: Hiroshima Reconsidered in the Life of Claude Eatherly' (1967) profiled the B-29 reconnaissance plane pilot who reported clear skies over Hiroshima before the Enola Gay dropped the bomb that destroyed the city in 1945. Mr. Eatherly's avowed feelings of guilt after the war were disputed by many who supported use of the bomb to end the conflict, but they were accepted by antinuclear groups and by Mr. Dugger. The New York Times Book Review called 'Dark Star' a carefully reported 'moral and personal statement.' In 'The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson' (1982), Mr. Dugger folded essays about Texas, Vietnam and nuclear weapons into a biography that ended with Johnson's years as the Senate majority leader. Mr. Dugger's 'On Reagan: The Man and His Presidency' (1983) used excerpts from 500 Reagan radio commentaries in the late 1970s to bolster his argument that his subject was a 'dogged right-wing ideologue.' Writing in The Times Book Review, David E. Rosenbaum said, 'Researchers may want to concentrate on particular chapters, for nowhere else is so much documented derogatory information about the 40th president of the United States presented in such well-organized fashion.' In 1996, Mr. Dugger was a founder of the Alliance for Democracy, a grass-roots organization that aimed to 'end corporate domination of politics, economics and the media' and 'create a true democracy.' Mr. Dugger, who lived in Austin, was inducted into the Daily Texan Hall of Fame in 2015. In 2012, when he received Long Island University's George Polk Award for lifetime achievement in journalism, he used his acceptance speech to ask a few questions: 'Why are nuclear weapons called 'weapons of mass destruction' when morally they are weapons of mass murder? President Obama calls for a nuclear-free world, but says it's not likely in our lifetimes. Why not? And what is the political and ethical responsibility of the American citizen for our H-bombs?'
