About Us
Our Staff
Carlton Carl, CEO and Executive Publisher
Carlton Carl became the CEO and Executive Publisher of The Texas Observer in January, 2008. Carlton oversees both the editorial content and the business side of our venerable magazine. A native of Houston and longtime resident of Austin who recently returned to Texas after 25 years in Washington, D.C., Carlton is a graduate of Columbia College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has done reporting for the Houston Chronicle and the New York Times, as well as freelance writing for other publications. His wealth of experience in Texas Democratic electoral politics and state and federal governments includes stints as a Texas gubernatorial press secretary, chief of staff to a Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, director of tax information for the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, press secretary to a Texas Member of Congress, campaign manager and/or media consultant in numerous Texas local, state, and federal campaigns. Most recently he worked in non-profit advocacy as vice president of media affairs and vice president of policy and strategy for the American Association for Justice (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America).
Bob Moser, Editor
Bob Moser became editor of The Texas Observer in October, 2008. Bob cut his journalistic teeth as editor of North Carolina's Independent Weekly, an award-winning alternative paper modeled on the original Observer. After leaving The Independent in 2000, Bob was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University during the 2000-2001 academic year. From 2001 to 2004, he was an award-winning senior writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report, reporting on American extremists, particularly the religious right and the anti-immigrant movement. He has freelanced for national publications including Out and Rolling Stone, where he won the 2006 GLAAD Award for best magazine article. Bob's first book, Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority, was published in August, 2008 by Times Books. From 2005 until he became Observer editor, he wrote and edited for The Nation magazine, where his 2008 election campaign coverage included the series, "Purple America," on the evolving politics of "red" states including Texas.
Chris Tomlinson, Managing Editor
Chris Tomlinson took over as managing editor in August 2009. Before that he was a correspondent-at-large for The Associated Press working on foreign investigative stories. From June 2004 to August 2007 he was the AP's East Africa bureau chief in Nairobi, Kenya, responsible for text, photo and television coverage of 14 countries. Tomlinson started with the AP in 1995 as the Central Africa correspondent based in Rwanda. He served two years as an editor at AP's headquarters in New York City and was appointed East Africa correspondent in 2000. Drawing on his seven years of experience as a decorated U.S. soldier, the AP assigned Tomlinson to cover the war in Afghanistan. He was chosen as the AP's lead embedded reporter during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and has spent a cumulative two years in Iraq. He has won numerous awards for his war reporting. He is a fifth-generation Texan, born in Dallas, and he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1992 with special honours in humanities.
Dave Mann, Associate Editor
Dave Mann joined the Observer in 2003 as session reporter, becoming Associate Editor in 2004. Before joining the Observer, Dave was a freelance journalist based in Austin. His work has appeared in the Austin Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, The Washington Post, and Salon among others. Prior to arriving in Austin, Dave worked as a staff writer for Fort Worth Weekly, contributing writer for Washington City Paper, and sports writer for The Winchester Star in Winchester, Va. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from George Washington University.
Melissa del Bosque, Investigative Reporter
Melissa del Bosque is the investigative reporter for the Observer. Prior to working at the Observer, she spent five years in the Texas Senate as a policy analyst and communications director. She has a Master's in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master's in Public Health from Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health. Prior to the Texas Senate, she covered the environment and health beat along the Texas-Mexico border for the Monitor newspaper in McAllen, Texas, and worked as a freelance journalist. Her work has been published in Time magazine, the Dallas Morning News, the Austin Chronicle and the Utne Reader.
Forrest Wilder, Staff Writer
Forrest Wilder joined the Observer as staff writer in April 2005 after working as an intern. Forrest graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in December 2003 with a major in Anthropology. While a student, he wrote music reviews, op-eds, and news stories for the Daily Texan and co-founded a student watchdog group. He has worked in the non-profit sector and has published in the Austin Chronicle, Santa Barbara News-Press, ZNet, and the NACLA Report on the Americas.
Julia Austin, Associate Publisher
Julia Austin first joined the Observer as Art Director in 1999 and returned in 2005 as Associate Publisher. She coordinates circulation, marketing, advertising, and the business office, and works with the publisher on the budget and development. Previously, she worked as a marketing manager and independent graphics consultant and contractor. Prior to that, she worked for the University of Texas at Austin as Designer and Production artist for the College of Natural Sciences and Publications Coordinator for the Office of Admissions. She received a Bachelor of Liberal Arts in the Plan II Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin.
Candace Carpenter, Circulation/Office Manager
Candace Carpenter first joined the Observer as the Circulation/Office Manager in 1999 and and left in 2001 to pursue a college education. In 2006 she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Spanish. After college and prior to coming back to the Observer, she worked as an office manager in the office of an accountant who specializes in business management for the Texas music industry. Candace is originally from the Mississippi Gulf Coast but came to Texas at a young age and has adapted to Texan ways. However, she has never grown accustomed to chicken fried steak.
Daniel Lievens, Art Director
Daniel Lievens became Art Director of the Texas Observer in May of 2009. In addition to art directing at the Observer, he teaches Graphic Design at St. Edward's University. He holds an MFA in Design from the University of Texas at Austin.
Shane Pearson, Webmaster
Shane joined the Observer in April 2008 as Webmaster. He is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin majoring in Computer Science. He is a Certified HTML Developer for HTML, XHTML and CSS from the W3Schools and has previous experience doing freelance work and as webmaster of the Longhorn Hellraisers, a student group at UT.
Rusty Todd, Copy Editor
During 2009, West Texan Rusty Todd is copy-editing the Observer from Hong Kong, where he's on sabbatical. He teaches journalism at the University of Texas-Austin. Todd was a senior editor and reporter at the Asian Wall Street Journal in the '80s and '90s, and was founding editor of the Dow Jones emerging markets news wire. He was the Austin American-Statesman's first state editor. Todd earned a doctorate at Stanford in the '70s, when his family moved to the Bay Area to facilitate attending Grateful Dead concerts.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Poetry Editor
Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, essayist, and novelist. She has received a Lannan Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and four Pushcart Prizes. Her collection 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is the author of two acclaimed novels for teens, Habibi and Going Going. Although Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as "a wandering poet," she calls San Antonio, Texas, home.
