The actual anniversary date for the then-named Rivard Report’s first day of publication was Feb. 13, 2012, but the celebration was held last week at the Witte Museum’s Mays Family Center, with 360 supporters on hand to mark the occasion.
Publisher and CEO Angie Mock and her business team know how to throw a party. After a reception in the museum’s Valero Great Hall, attendees took their seats and were welcomed by Opera San Antonio soprano Bronwyn White and tenor William Chapman, who performed two robust selections.
They were followed by Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, San Antonio’s Poet Laureate and hip-hop artist, performing with Agarita, an ensemble of creative classical musicians.
H-E-B was honored for the company’s community-driven leadership displayed throughout the pandemic, with President Craig Boyan and other partners on hand to accept the recognition.
The evening included a keynote address by ABC senior correspondent John Quiñones, a San Antonio native and host of the What Would You Do? program, and a longtime friend of mine dating back to the early 1980s and our time covering the civil wars in Central America.
San Antonio conjunto icon Flaco Jimenez y los Texmaniacs closed out the evening with a lively set that sent people home dancing.
It was a memorable evening for my wife, Monika, and me, to have our work honored and to share the experience with the talented team of 23 San Antonio Report staffers led by Mock and editor-in-chief Leigh Munsil, both of whom spoke about the next 10 years at the event.
They start their decade with a lot of momentum. San Antonio continues to rank as one of the fastest-growing U.S. cities, and there has never been more news to report and intelligently analyze and present to our informed readers and supporting members and donors.
San Antonians have a variety of news sources to choose from in the market, but our mission-driven team offers readers its daily report at no charge. We do not have a paywall like for-profit news sites, and our hyperlocal coverage offers a unique focus on the city and the region.
I’ve always tried to think globally and act locally in my time leading the team here, and I believe that shows in our coverage when we cover topics like poverty, race, policing, education, immigration, refugee resettlement and other topics of national or international interest that also hit home.
You can expect that approach to continue under Munsil. With a small team of reporters and freelance contributors, editors here have to pick and choose what we cover, which is why you do not read a daily crime or sports report on the San Antonio Report. That information is widely available elsewhere. We focus on the news and events that are most important to you and the trajectory of the city.
We also know that in a deeply divided nation, many look at the media with distrust. We work hard to deliver fact-based reporting and commentary, including regular opinion columns by me and longtime Texas columnist Rick Casey, and we avoid the sensational stuff that serves as clickbait on other news sites, but also diminishes the engaged citizen’s reading experience.
I’ve received a lot of emails from friends and readers in recent weeks joking that the San Antonio Report won’t be deriving much revenue from plaintiff’s lawyers in the coming year after this recent column. Actually, we count many of those lawyers among our readers we respect. It’s just the handful spending millions of dollars promoting lawsuits that I criticized, and we are not their choice of venue and never will be.
We rely instead on you, the reader, to decide your experience with the San Antonio Report merits your financial support at whatever level is comfortable. We have major philanthropic donors, charitable foundations and many of the city’s leading employers supporting our work. We also have $25 members, $10 a month members, and we value each and every one of them.
The Report’s long-term viability will be built on a sturdy foundation of sustaining members. If you already are a member, please accept my gratitude for you and all the others who helped us make it through a full decade with so much promise.
If you are new to our site, please sign up for a free daily and weekly newsletters. No spam, promise.
If you are a regular reader already who subscribes to our newsletter but has never joined, please take that next big step and join now. Mock and Munsil and team promise a good return on your investment in the coming decade.
