From the Editor
hen Randa Duncan
Williams was growing
up in Houston in the
1970s, she was an avid
reader, devouring ev-
erything from novels to literary
nonfi ction. She was particularly
fond of a then-new magazine called
Texas Monthly. When her parents’
subscription arrived each month,
she would thrill to its true stories
of outsized Texas characters. Over
the years, she saved piles of old
copies, and could quote passages of
her favorite articles from memory.
And so, when Randa announced
on June 25 that she was buying Tex-
as Monthly, we felt we were in good
hands. “My family is delighted to
provide the resources to support
this iconic Texas institution,” she
says. “The journalistic integrity and
quality for which Texas Monthly is
known will remain unchanged.”
Her acquisition of this maga-
zine is great news for everyone who
treasures it. A seasoned lawyer andexecutive, she’s the chairman of
Enterprise Products Company, a
private fi rm with interests in en-
ergy, real estate, and ranching. She
now will also serve as chairman of
Texas Monthly LLC.
She purchased Texas Month-
ly from Genesis Park, a Hous-
ton-based private equity firm
whose managing partner, Paul
Hobby, served as the magazine’s
chairman. At the time Genesis
Park took over, in late 2016, the
magazine had struggled with de-
clining revenue. Paul led invest-
ment in newer platforms with
growth potential: a more robust
website, podcasts, and events such
as Texas Monthly Live and our an-
nual Edge of Texas festival. Under
his stewardship, Texas Monthly’s
total audience engagement rose
by 76 percent.
Randa intends to accelerate in-
vestment in these new storytell-
ing platforms, and in the literary
tradition that caused her to fall in
love with the print magazine as
a teenager. “I especially enjoy its
longform storytelling,” she says. “I
want to own Texas Monthly forev-
er. And I want the quality to be the
best it’s ever been.”Amid all the good news at Tex-
as Monthly in June, we were sad-
dened to lose three dear former
colleagues and friends. On page 62
of this issue, you can read writer-
at-large John Spong ’s memorial
to Bill Wittliff, a longtime Texas
writer, photographer, and archi-
vist who died of a heart attack on
June 9. As John makes clear, for
all of Bill’s professional successes,
his fi nest trait was the generosity
he showed both to friends and to
people he barely knew.
On June 22, a stroke felled liter-DAN GOODGAME
EDITOR IN CHIEF
[email protected]ary critic Don Graham, who served
as the J. Frank Dobie Regents Pro-
fessor of American and English
Literature at the University of
Texas at Austin. Don was a long-
time contributor to Texas Month-
ly and penned some of our most
learned—and, occasionally, incen-
diary—book reviews. He was wide-
ly regarded as the world’s leading
scholar of Texas literature—and
was no slouch on Texas movies.
You can read deputy editor Jeff
Salamon’s appreciation of him at
texasmonthly.com/don-graham.
Four days later, historian and
author Lonn Taylor died at the age
of 79—the same age as Wittliff and
Graham. Lonn was the author of
books such as Texas People, Tex-
as Places, and Marfa for the Per-
plexed. He wrote a popular column
about Texas artifacts for this mag-
azine. Former senior editor Joe
Nick Patoski’s tribute to Lonn can
be found at texasmonthly.com
/lonn-taylor.
The admirable work of Bill and
Don and Lonn exemplifies what
our new owner has in mind when
she says she wants Texas Monthly
to be the best it’s ever been. That’s
our goal, and I hope you’ll write
me at the address below to share
your thoughts on what we should
do more of, and less of, and better.Our New Owner
W
COURTESY^ OF^ ENTERPRISEPRODUCTS^PARTNERS12 TEXAS MONTHLY