A new podcast telling the stories of San Antonians launched recently, with San Antonio Report co-founder — and former editor and publisher — Robert Rivard taking a new seat behind the microphone.
Recorded live Monday during San Antonio Startup Day at the small business incubator Geekdom, the inaugural episode of the weekly podcast “big city small town” began with, “I’m your host, Bob Rivard.”
In the show notes, the podcast is described as telling the stories of San Antonio people “working to make the city a more sustainable, better educated, equitable and prosperous city.” It is sponsored by Geekdom and downtown developer Weston Urban.
A veteran print and digital journalist, Rivard said he chose to make the move into podcasting when it became clear to him that today’s news consumers are reading less and listening more. The new medium is also giving him the opportunity to spread his wings.
“I think that I can engage in storytelling here in a way that’s a little bit more freewheeling than what I was able to do in traditional journalism,” Rivard said. “At this stage of my career, after 46 years in journalism, I’m enjoying doing something that’s a little bit more entertainment-driven, educational, journalistic at its base, and certainly in its ethics.”
The first episode featured Rivard’s interview with Randy Smith, CEO of Weston Urban, about everything from real estate and the downtown campus of UTSA to the expanding San Pedro Creek Culture Park and baseball.
Smith is among the new owners of the San Antonio Missions minor league baseball team, an ownership group that is “without exception, unequivocally committed to a more centrally located ballpark,” he said.
Rivard asked why it has been difficult to find space to put a ballpark downtown.
The answer, said Smith, has as much to do with how the city developed over the course of its 300-year history as it does with the modern-day requirements of Major League Baseball.
It’s an urgent problem to solve. “If we do not do something about where the Missions play baseball, we will not have the Missions,” Smith said.
Future episodes of the podcast will feature chef Elizabeth Johnson, founder of Pharm Table; podcaster Brandon Seale; former mayor Henry Cisneros and Thomas Corser, CEO of Arboretum San Antonio.
Rivard announced his retirement from the San Antonio Report, a local nonprofit news organization he co-founded with wife Monika Maeckle, in November 2022.
These days, he writes a weekly opinion column for the San Antonio Report while also hosting the independent weekly podcast.
“I like the idea of reinvention,” Rivard said. “I’d like to see myself as a role model for other people that have maybe completed their traditional careers to understand that it’s never too late to try something new.
“I’m also nearing the end of a really long career, and I just wanted something that would keep my voice in the community that wouldn’t demand full-time attention,” he said.
New episodes of “big city small town” will be released on Mondays and streamed at podcast-hosting sites like iHeart, Amazon and Spotify.
Geekdom is a financial supporter of the San Antonio Report. For a full list of business members, click here.
