Throughout his career, Dan Goodgame, editor-in-chief of the magazine Texas Monthly, interviewed six U.S. presidents, as well as other prominent public figures such as Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch, Tiger Woods, and former president of Iraq Saddam Hussein.
While visiting the University of Mississippi, Goodgame reflected on his job as editor-in-chief and the role of his magazine for the Texan community.
“I see our work as delivering the best storytelling about Texas in all the ways: the great profiles of people, political stories, robbery tales, true crime, plus, the best ways to enjoy dances and all that it has to offer, outdoor activities and restaurants and great hotels and camping, you name it,” Goodgame says.
As an editor of a print magazine, Goodgame acknowledges that the print press is in increasing competition with multimedia.
“Our market research indicates that there’s a large number of people who do not now read Texas Monthly on any of its platforms because they prefer to get their storytelling and their service journalism in video, whether that’s on YouTube or selected websites, so we’re gonna aggressively work to that audience,” Goodgame says.
Texas Monthly has around 270,000 print subscribers with over 2 million unique visitors to the website every month and Goodgame is determined to keep it growing.
“One of the first things I did was to get the website redesigned to where it was optimized for mobile. We think about that a lot. When we edit stories for the web, we did a bit differently than we do from trying to keep them tighter, or in cases where it’s a long narrative, we’ll break it up into parts. And one of the things I love about the internet is you can just watch people’s behavior, you can watch them interact with your work,” Goodgame says.
Goodgame highlights that no matter the format, good journalism is needed in order for a publication to grow and profit. He believes it is essential to keep providing readers and viewers content that is accurate, informative, compelling, and challenging.
“The investigative story and even the deeply analytical story about an issue like criminal justice reform, … these stories are what establishes your brand in the mind of the reader as something special,” Goodgame says. “The mix is really important. And having serious, substantive stuff in there I think becomes more important as newspapers get weaker.”
Dan Goodgame earned his journalism degree at the University of Mississippi before studying at Oxford University. He started his career as a night police reporter for the Tempa Tribune before becoming a correspondent in the Middle East and Europe for the Miami Herald. Goodgame worked for the Time first in Los Angeles and later in Washington, where he went from White House correspondent to bureau chief. He later became editor of Fortune Small Business before leaving journalism to become a communications consultant. He had been working as a vice-president for executive communications at Rackspace (a computing company) for nine years when he became editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly in 2019.