Jeff Beckham

Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith is praised by the Houston Chronicle as having “helped the 300,000-circulation magazine return to its hard-hitting yet cheeky roots and earned it a continued presence at the National Magazine Awards”.

The story covers the anxiety that some had when Smith took over six years ago - the concerns about whether a New Yorker could successful manage “the national magazine of Texas”. Instead, Smith has done an exemplary job returning the magazine’s focus to long-form, public interest features as well as reaching out to new audiences. (The recent cover story on Houston preacher Joel Osteen is cited as an example.)

Now that the print version is back at the top of its game, I’d like to see Smith’s influence on the online version of Texas Monthly. Right now, the site is heavily ad-laden, and the target audience seems divided between advertisers and subscribers. Much of the content - even that promoted as “Web-only Stories” - is trapped behind a paywall or available to subscribers only.

In reference to Mark Cuban’s “depth and differentiation” argument, Texas Monthly has the opportunity to be the source of information about Texas culture. There’s also unlimited space to help Smith in his quest to reach out to long-ignored parts of the state.

Update: In a somewhat-related move, former Time.com editorial chief Richard Stengel has been named as the magazine’s new managing editor. Stengal will oversee both the print version and online version of Time. PaidContent.org passes along these two reactions:

Wall Street Journal: One of Mr. Stengel’s first orders of business will be to overhaul Time’s online presence, a process already under way.

Marketwatch: Jon Friedman has some good advice for how to retool Time: “It starts with the Web. It’s vital to make Time as interactive as possible. Readers love to put their two cents in and confront journalists. This is both healthy and productive for a magazine. I recently suggested to Steve Koepp, Time’s deputy managing editor and the person in charge of its Web site: If people enjoy writing for the Internet, then the readers will sense their excitement, too, and want to get involved by writing e-mail replies.”