T-Squared: A farewell to TribTalk

In May 2014, I took to this space to announce the launch of a new vertical for us — an op-ed sister site we called TribTalk.

Five-and-a-half years later, we’re ending our op-ed adventure. The Texas Tribune will no longer publish to TribTalk, no longer accept reader submissions, and will — in due time — retire the website tribtalk.org.

Here’s why:

From Day One, the Trib has been committed to experimentation and innovation — to sticking with what works and parting ways with what doesn’t. Indeed, as part of our 2018 strategic planning process, we pledged to get better at saying “no” to aspects of our business that had run their course so we had the time, energy and resources to say “yes” to ambitious new ideas.

In the last five years, TribTalk never garnered the same type of interest — the same traffic, the same social shares – our destination news site gets. And it never had the same devotees — the engaged audience that makes our live events and our comment threads and our member community so robust. For those reasons, we're closing its doors.

But readers, never fear: We’ll still share your perspectives and voices, you’ll just find them within our news stories and our videos and our podcasts. We’ll still ask the questions you want answered, during live events, in our This Is Your Texas Facebook group, and by way of our Texplainer series. And sponsors will still be able to pay to message to our audience in clearly labeled “paid posts” on our primary site, texastribune.org.

In our aforementioned strategic plan, we wrote that it was time for the Trib to get a little uncomfortable again. Sometimes that means having the guts to make hard decisions about the best use of the Trib's resources.