About Us

Howdy, reader.

Thanks for spending time with The Barbed Wire, where we bring you independent Texas journalism. We hope to make you laugh, tell your stories, shine a light on parts of Texas you've never seen, and entertain you — whether you're scrolling our Instagram, watching on TikTok, enjoying one of our excellent newsletters, or reading right here on the site.

When you subscribe, you'll stay in the loop with the latest from our newsletters. When you become a member with a paid subscription, you'll get some great merch, invites to events across the state, and exclusive access to our reporting team. Thank you!

The Barbed Wire is a public benefit corporation and is fiscally sponsored by the Lenfest Institute, a leader in non-profit journalism.

Our Work

The majesty, absurdity, diversity, and ferocity of Texas is in everything we do — from headline-worthy scoops and cultural analysis to in-depth reporting and investigations.

Our editorial outlook is ideologically progressive, and our journalism is nonpartisan. At The Barbed Wire, we have assembled a team of spectacular contributors who treat all political parties and all candidates as fair targets of thoughtful reporting — and as joke fodder for our merch store. We won’t be engaging in both-sidesism or providing a platform for unscientific, inaccurate information. We’ll be fact-first, thoughtful, and intentional about how we approach our coverage. 

We’re going to respect your attention by earning your trust with honesty and plain language. If water is falling from the sky, we’ll call it rain. If a law has disenfranchised people based on the color of their skin, we’ll call that racist. We’ll write headlines that are spicy and hopefully funny, but aren’t clickbait.

With the help of our readers and funders — a mix of private investors, nonprofit grantors, and you, our individual members and supporters — The Barbed Wire celebrates Texas culture in all its wonderful weirdness.

Team

David Cohen is the founder and CEO of The Barbed Wire. Before journalism, he spent two decades in national politics — including Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign — and as founder of Forward Majority, a national organization focused on state legislative races.

Mario Leal is The Barbed Wire's news director and the founding anchor of the Barbed Wire News Brief. He is a Texas native, and an Emmy and Murrow Award-winning journalist, specializing in bilingual, Texas-native reporting.

Brian Gaar is a founding member of The Barbed Wire and writes the Wild Texas newsletter. A longtime Texas journalist, he has written for the Austin American-Statesman, the Waco Tribune-Herald, Texas Monthly, and more, and was a writer and producer at Rooster Teeth.

Elizabeth Spiers advises and edits The Barbed Wire. She is a New York Times contributor, an NYU journalism professor, and a media entrepreneur — the founding editor of Gawker and former editor-in-chief of the New York Observer.

Brian Sweany advises The Barbed Wire on editorial, business and strategy. He is former editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly, where he was on staff for 18 years. A native Texan who was born on Texas Independence Day, he began his career in journalism as an intern at the magazine in 1996.

And The Barbed Wire is bigger than any masthead — see everyone who has written for us on our Contributors page.

Standards

Our style guide is a mix of Associated Press and preferences we’ve accumulated working in previous newsrooms, with influences from Language, Please; the Trans Journalists Association Stylebook and Coverage Guide; the Disability Language Style Guide from the National Center on Disability and Journalism; The Diversity Style Guide, a project by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism; the Reporting and Indigenous Terminology Guide from the Native American Journalists Association; the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Cultural Competence Handbook; the National Association of Black Journalists Style Guide; the BuzzFeed Style Guide (RIP); and the Dart Center Style Guide for Trauma-Informed Journalism.

Anonymous sources will be used only in cases of legitimate, demonstrable fear of professional or personal damage when stories serve the public interest. In those cases, editorial leadership will ensure that reporters have verified the source’s identity through all means possible, including corroborating interviews, social media accounts, and public records. Even with documentation and corroboration, sole anonymous sources will not, except in very rare cases, be the basis for stories published in The Barbed Wire.

When we refer to other reporting, in citations or quotations, we will attribute with a hyperlink to the original source and, as often as possible, name those sources. Plagiarism and factual fabrication are not permitted and will be taken seriously.

Conflicts of interest involving either reporters or editors — including previous work histories, personal relationships, and more — must be disclosed to The Barbed Wire’s editorial and legal teams, and, when applicable, included in the text of a story or in an editor’s note.

We issue corrections when we make mistakes. We will do so quickly and then tell you what happened. We will acknowledge factual errors and their requisite updates via an editor’s note at the end of a story or — in cases of significant errors — at the top of a story. Our editorial decisions will be guided by this sentiment: We will disclose as much as possible, as often as possible.

Stories will be deleted or removed from the website only in extreme circumstances — some examples may include significant factual inaccuracies, legal or ethical violations, or personal safety concerns. In those events, our editorial leadership will make the decision and then explain to readers why it happened. 

In public and online, The Barbed Wire team may observe actions and record statements without identifying themselves or asking for comment, as is industry standard for rallies, protests, and public forums. However, in communicating with any sources directly, reporters will identify themselves as working for The Barbed Wire when asking questions and seeking permission for the use of materials. Same goes should questions be asked of the reporters themselves. Any individuals and organizations that are the significant focus of original reporting — even when the focus of that reporting is social media content — should be contacted with requests for comment before publication and given a reasonable time to respond. The Barbed Wire’s journalists are encouraged to be active online and may express personal opinions that do not reflect the official position of the newsroom at large.

The Barbed Wire will employ reader warnings — and provide resources — when featuring content that covers suicide, severe mental illness, violence, threatening language, as well as natural and human-caused disasters.