© 2024 Texas Public Radio
Real. Reliable. Texas Public Radio.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

What To Expect From This Year's Texas Tribune Festival

Texas Tribune editor-in-chief Evan Smith talks with the Standard about the fifth annual Tribune Fest.
Image via Flickr/Brian Winter for Knight Center (CC BY 2.0)
Texas Tribune editor-in-chief Evan Smith talks with the Standard about the fifth annual Tribune Fest.

From Texas Standard

Get ready, folks. We're officially a week away from the biggest event in Texas: the  Texas Tribune Festival, that annual gathering of the state and nation's political elite with regular Texans who want the inside track on politics and policy.

Who better to talk to about Trib Fest than the man whose big idea it was:  Evan Smith, the CEO and  editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune.

The "P.T. Barnum of the nerd circus," he says the three-day event is an opportunity to bring "people of unlike mind together."

“We want to be a public square, a place where the community comes together to talk about the issues that affect all of us," Smith says.

What you'll hear in this segment:

  • How the festival has evolved over the past five years.
  • What to expect from this year's festival.
  • What conversations Smith is looking forward to having.

Texas Tribune Fest will take place in Austin from October 16-18.

Copyright 2020 KUT 90.5. To see more, visit KUT 90.5.

Emily Donahue is KUT’s news director. She has spent more than two decades in broadcast journalism and launched KUT’s news department in 2001. Previously, Emily was part of the Peabody-award winning team at Marketplace as producer of the Marketplace Morning Report. Since coming to KUT, Emily has overseen a doubling of the news staff and content, the accumulation of more than 50 local, national and international awards for journalistic excellence and served on several boards, including the Texas Associated Press Broadcasters and as a member of the 2011 Texas Association of Broadcasters Open Government Task Force. Emily lives in Austin and is currently working on her Master’s in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin.