I've been thinking a lot lately about moving to Austin and the graduate program I'm about to get into. (For those who haven't heard, I was accepted to the Master's program in Journalism at UT-Austin.) In particular, I'm curious about what sort of activism I'll be doing in addition to graduate studies. I imagine that the Journalism department will encourage me to write or work for the Daily Texan, which is UT's student newspaper. It's just so liberal, though. Instead, I'd like to continue working independently of mainstream and pseudo-mainstream publications (which includes the Daily Texan).

In my view, I basically have three options:

My first option is to find an existing publication that I empathize with and write for that. I cannot see myself doing this long-term, however. 

The second option is that I can start a new newspaper or magazine with other radical and progressive students in Austin. Maybe it would focus on activism or some specific activist movement in Texas. The immigrant rights and abolitionist movements come to mind. Getting started would be a complete pain in the ass, but probably very exciting if and when we found the right bunch of people to get things rolling. It's hard to say much about this option, though, since it involves working with a bunch of as-of-yet unknown people with as-of-yet unknown ideas and aspirations about what such a project might look like.

The third option is to simply continue working on Turning the Tide, albeit with broader horizons than we currently enjoy. I'm personally leaning towards this, although we might have to change the name of the publication. (Turning the Tide is currently the name of an anti-racist/anti-prison newspaper.) Magazine content could be divided into feature pieces, letters, etc., but also include news stories from other "bureaus" in different cities such as Houston, Corpus Christi, Austin, Laredo, Dallas, etc. Each bureau could be responsible for collectively writing, editing, and contributing news stories from those regions, as well as selling/distributing the magazine to wider and wider audiences. We could also use the magazine as a tool for connecting activists across cities, spreading word about major demonstrations, including a directory of a radical and progressive groups throughout Texas, and many other things. In short, if I pursue this option then Turning the Tide could possibly evolve into something comparable to a federated Z Magazine for South Texas, but with a stronger emphasis on movement building. A 32-page newsprint magazine should fit the bill, and wouldn't cost an insane amount to print.

One of the things I like about Z Magazine is that it does attempt to connect activist efforts throughout the world. No other magazine that I know of does this. A problem with Z Magazine, though, is that often it is too broad for people who want to effect change locally. In Texas, it seems like certain issues preoccupy many of our most committed and talented radicals: the death penalty and immigration, for instance, are in a way very "Texan" causes. Wouldn't it be nice if Texas radicals had a magazine they could better relate to, where they could read articles and say, "Hey, I was actually at that protest! I felt the same way"?

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