The South/press: Cheeky TM

“Texans,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald would have said, “are different from you and me.” Yes, they have Texas Monthly. Theirs is the only state in the South with a slick, thick and entertainingly cheeky magazine to tell residents what sets them apart from other Americans —and what does not.

Since it was launched in 1973 by Reporter-turned-Lawyer Michael R. Levy, 30, Texas Monthly has taken on just about every sacred steer in the Lone Star State: college football, the Miss Texas Pageant, oil barons, the Texas Rangers, Dallas banks. TM’s exposure of a backwoods speed trap near San Antonio that collected fines of $168,000 a year led to suits by the county and a nearby town. No Texas legislator on TM’s biennial “ten best” list has ever been defeated, while 40% of those listed among the “ten worst” are out of office. Says Levy: “We’ve managed to offend everybody, and we’ve gotten away with it.”

One reason is Texas Monthly’s mix: a skilled blend of solid investigative articles, statewide consumer guides to shopping and shows, the clever graphics of Art Director Sybil Newman Broyles and paeans to such Texas institutions as cowboy boots, wildcat oil drillers, chicken fried steaks and the brothel “that slept more politicians than the Driskill Hotel and the Governor’s mansion combined.” In fact, keeping citified Texans in touch with their frontier heritage is one of TM’s top missions. Says Editor William Broyles, 31: “Our goal is to locate, and glory in, the rough edges of Texas culture.”

Bringing Texas to the Texans has brought prosperity to Texas Monthly. Circulation has risen from an initial 20,000 in 1973 to nearly 200,000, and TM is now available on newsstands from Boston to Boulder, Colo. Next month’s issue will bulge with 111½ pages of advertising, up from the first month’s six.

The son of a Dallas real estate developer, balding, bankerly Mike Levy went East to college, worked as a reporter for U.P.I, and as an ad salesman for Philadelphia magazine before entering the University of Texas law school in 1969. “Texas had become sophisticated,” he says, “but the state’s press was still back in 1946.” So, with a newly won law degree and a grubstake from his father, Levy rented space in a dingy office building next to a false teeth factory in Austin and found Bill Broyles, an ex-Marine who was then an assistant to the Houston school superintendent. Like virtually everyone else Levy hired, Broyles was under 30 and almost innocent of journalistic experience. That was no handicap. After its first year, Texas Monthly won a National Magazine Award for specialized journalism, the first time the magazine industry’s Oscar has gone to a newcomer.

Today, Texas Monthly has a staff of 50, plush offices on the 16th floor of an Austin bank building, and a $700,000 editorial budget—17.5% of the magazine’s total expected revenues, v. an average of less than 11% at leading U.S. monthlies. Though staff members struck last summer after a Levy memo urged caution in writing about advertisers, the Texas kids are generally happy to be there. Says Senior Editor Richard West: “What could be better than writing about the land where you grew up?”

The Entertainers. TM is not every Texan’s cup of tequila. Houston Department Store Merchant Robert Sakowitz canceled his monthly full-page ad over an article that he thought unfairly critical of Brother-in-Law Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., chairman of the troubled Coastal States Gas Corp. Other readers find the magazine too taken with the bizarre majesty of Texas, its people and folkways, to be earnestly reformist. “You’ll never find anything dull in Texas Monthly,” sniffs Kaye Northcott, editor of the populist Texas Observer. “But, there are an amazing number of important stories that can’t be just glossed over.” Bill Broyles, in defense, does not think it sinful to stress readability. “We’re after irreverent, tough journalism, but the magazine must never lose its sense of humor,” says he. “We’re in the entertainment business.”