Texas Tribune Snags Mark Miller

Comes word that the Texas Tribune has hired Mark Miller (he formerly of the DMN for a short stint) to be its editor. You can jump for the full release if you’re so inclined. Two points about that move: 1) Miller is a man of enormous talents. He made the DMN a noticeably better paper when he helmed the front page of the Sunday edition. The Tribune is fortunate to have him. 2) Given that Tribune editor-in-chief Evan Smith earns north of $300,000, we can assume Miller, with all his experience, takes home at least $200,000 (and surely we won’t have to wait for the 990 to find out, right guys?). Maybe D Magazine ought to explore that whole nonprofit model of doing journalism. It seems to be working.

TEXAS TRIBUNE HIRES NEWSWEEK VETERAN
MARK MILLER AS EDITOR
 
Newsweekly’s Editorial Director Joins the Award-Winning
Non-Profit News Outlet In Newly Created Position
 
 
Austin, TX — November 8, 2010 — Evan Smith, Editor-in-Chief and CEO of The Texas Tribune, announced today that the non-profit media organization has appointed Mark Miller to the newly created position of Editor. Miller will begin in December and will oversee the day-to-day editorial operations of the Tribune, reporting to Smith.
 
Miller previously served as Editorial Director of Newsweek and Editor of Newsweek Digital. At the venerable newsweekly, Miller oversaw key aspects of the editorial operation, helping to set overall strategy and manage operating budgets, personnel issues and production as well as reporting and reporting standards and ethical practices.
 
Miller joined Newsweek in 1985 as a summer intern in its Washington bureau and–apart from a two-and-half-year stint at the Dallas Morning News as assistant managing editor for Sunday and Enterprise Reporting from 2004 to 2006 and an earlier stint at ABC News–has spent much of the last 25 years at the magazine in various positions.

 

In 1986 he became a Newsweek Washington correspondent, covering the drug war as well as other law-enforcement and justice-related issues. In 1990, he moved to New York as a reporter/writer in the magazine’s culture, lifestyle and society sections. In August 1991, Miller became a political correspondent working exclusively on covering the 1992 presidential campaign. Miller was part of the magazine’s special quadrennial election project in which a team of correspondents goes behind the scenes to chronicle the race for the presidency. He secured unprecedented access to Bill Clinton’s campaign, including confidential memorandums, research and senior strategy meetings with the candidate and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. 

 

Miller’s reporting produced a number of exclusives, such as the then-unknown prominent role Mrs. Clinton played in making strategic decisions and a secret research operation, code-named “The Manhattan Project,” designed to save Clinton’s candidacy in the summer of 1992. Newsweek’s instant history, published less than 36 hours after the polls closed on Nov. 5, 1992, was honored with several awards, including the most prestigious American magazine prize, the National Magazine Award.  The special election project was expanded and published as a book, Quest for the Presidency 1992, in 1994 by Texas A&M University Press.

 

Miller also served as Newsweek’s National Correspondent, Los Angeles Bureau Chief, West Coast Editor, Senior Editor for News Development and Chief of Correspondents, overseeing the magazine’s network of domestic and foreign bureaus and helping to direct the magazine’s award-winning reporting on 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan.

“I’m am thrilled to be a part of what Evan Smith, John Thornton and the staff of The Texas Tribune have created in just the site’s first year of operation,” Miller says. “In a time in which many traditional news organizations are retrenching, the Trib and other organizations like it represent a revolution in how serious journalism is produced and I could not be more excited to join.” 

“Mark is such a catch: an extraordinary journalist and respected editor who knows Texas, knows politics and knows newsgathering in the digital sphere,” Smith says. “He’ll be an amazing addition to the Trib staff – especially as we head into a legislative session.”
 
A Texas native, Miller earned his B.F.A in journalism and his B.A. in history from Southern Methodist University.
 
For more on The Texas Tribune, please visit www.texastribune.org
 
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About The Texas Tribune
The Texas Tribune is a non-profit, nonpartisan public media organization whose mission is to promote civic engagement and discourse on the public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide interest. Based in the Texas capital, the Tribune won two national Edward R. Murrow awards and a General Excellence award from the Online News Association in its first year.