New Statesman Capitol Bureau Chief

Embry’s New Title

Recently, I wrote about the decline reporters dedicated and assigned to cover our arcane state capitol. My post was about the big picture—the decline of overall coverage of what is perhaps the most important beat in Texas.

Lately, because of the apparent primary race between incumbent governor Rick Perry and Texas’ senior Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a national spotlight is focused on the big domed building at the foot of Congress Avenue. Texas has been pigeon-holed as a red state regardless, but how red are we? That is a question to be answered later.

Did you know that since Ken Herman left Austin to cover the nation’s capitol beat for Cox Newspapers, there has been no bureau chief for the Austin American-Statesman? That’s been quite a while, something like 2001. A lot has happened since then both in Washington and here in Austin. Now, Herman is back home writing for the editorial page at the American-Statesman, and there is now a new Statesman bureau chief at the state capitol.

The new Capitol bureau chief is Jason Embry, who also covered the Washington beat at one time, according to Debbie Hiott, American-Statesman managing editor. “Jason will continue to be our lead reporter in the governor's race and write his popular “First Reading” blog, but he will also work closely with our State Editor Debra Davis, coordinating coverage at the Capitol during the session and helping her with overall state coverage strategy,” Hiott says.

Embry has been with the Statesman since 2003. Prior to that, he was a reporter for the Waco Herald-Tribune and the Killeen Daily Herald. He earned his BA from Southwestern in Georgetown in 1998. Ah, it’s a young journalists’ business.

Embry and his colleagues will have plenty of interesting stories ahead in the new election cycle, closely followed by the legislative session in 2011.

© Jim McNabb, 2009