What Went Wrong: A first-time editor in chief reflects on a startup that didn’t work
When The Barbed Wire debuted, in 2024, it promised “something different: a site that combines the best of savvy, new-model online journalism with Texas’s deep—and very old—association with progressive ideas.” Its goal, Olivia Messer, the editor in chief, wrote at the time, was to reach the millions of Texans who weren’t reading their local newspaper or any statewide news outlet, and to do it in a way that created a new hybrid for-profit/nonprofit revenue model for journalism.
The Barbed Wire lasted for a little under two years, publishing 725 stories. This spring, it ran out of money. All…
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