Yes, I am aware that the world today runs largely on TikTok, YouTube, some combination of X and Bluesky, Netflix, and surely some other internet concoctions that I’m not allowed to understand as I am past 30. I also understand that, while my nose is buried in a magazine, a successful revolution could very well be organized on a social media platform I’ve never even logged into.
Well, so be it. The Texas Observer is going to keep publishing longform journalism anyway.
I’m able to see in our web traffic data, our climbing print membership numbers, and our reader responses that there remains a hunger in the land for this sort of work—the type of reading experience that can change your opinion on an issue, that is actually interesting fodder for cocktail party conversations, that can even motivate you to take action. Reading stories like these does take more effort than scrolling, but there’s a payoff!
Longform nonfiction is designed to be started, finished, and to leave you with something to show for it—not to pilfer as much of your precious life as possible for profit.
On that note, here are 10 of the best Observer longform stories from 2024 (in no particular order). They include a mix of more document-based, investigative pieces and more cultural or personal work. Here’s hoping they might enrich your end-of-year holidays, as we brace for the brewing storm that is 2025.
1. Return to Kíłááhíí. An elder is restored to the Lipan Apache people more than 750 years after her death. By Darcie Little Badger
2. Texas’ Hotbed of Taiwanese Nationalism. For decades, Houston families like mine have helped keep the flame of independence burning. By Josephine Lee
3. The Company You Keep. Ken and Angela Paxton have ties to a jet-setting lobbyist-turned-CEO caught in a tangled web of alleged fraud involving a powerful business clan and a commercial shipping giant. By Justin Miller
4. Solidarity from Solitary and Beyond. Texans are organizing inside and outside of prisons to empower incarcerated workers, who labor in dangerous conditions without pay. By Michelle Pitcher
5. Going to See the Volcanos. After unprecedented protests swept Cuba, a huge wave of people fled. A journalist shares his saga of being smuggled to the U.S.-Mexico border. By Jesús Jank Curbelo
6. The ‘Untranslatable Palestinian Flesh.’ What do we owe to language in times of unimaginable violence? Poets linked to both Palestine and Texas help show us the way. By Gabriel Fine
7. Border Vigilantes Are Blurring the Lines of Law Enforcement. Armed groups in Arizona and Texas are collaborating with and courting police and immigration agents—with alarming results. By Francesca D’Annunzio and Avery Schmitz
8. The GOP Megadonor Behind the Bid to Break Dallas City Government. Conservative hotelier Monty Bennett and a California-based company that offers protesters-for-hire have seeded an “astroturf” right-wing influence network that has kicked into overdrive to push controversial “Dallas HERO” city charter amendments. By Steven Monacelli
9. The Vet, the Cattle Prod, and the ‘Guttural Wail.’ An equine surgeon and Texas A&M professor has been convicted of animal cruelty after repeatedly shocking a horse in front of students, among other misdeeds, exposing the shaky ethics training of some veterinarians. By Caroline Collier
10. Forgotten Keepers of the Rio Grande Delta. An industrial buildout on the southern tip of Texas is erasing the last traces of an ancient world that still hasn’t died. By Dylan Baddour
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