Statesman executive editor to step down, take top editor role at Houston news outlet

American-Statesman Executive Editor Manny García will step down this month to take the role of editor in chief at the Houston Landing, a digital nonprofit news organization.

García’s last day with the Statesman will be March 29. Gannett, the Statesman’s parent company, will conduct a nationwide search for a successor.

“A career highlight for me has been leading the Austin American-Statesman for the past three years,” García said. “It is among the strongest and most talented news teams in all of Texas. No one can tell the story of Austin and Central Texas better than our award-winning newsroom. Period.

“The #MightyStatesman has a great future because of the talented bench of journalists that we have and the top-shelf leadership team that is in place.”

García joined the Statesman in 2021. The February 2021 winter storm caused a major power crisis and disruptions to water systems across Texas, including in Austin, two weeks into his tenure. García drove his truck in the snow to pick up Statesman journalists stranded in their homes and take them to the newsroom, which had power and water.

The newspaper’s “defining moment,” in García’s words, came more than a year later, when a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24, 2022.

Under his leadership, the Statesman became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service in 2023 for “unflinching coverage of local law enforcement’s flawed response” to one of the worst mass shootings in Texas history.

García won the Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year Award from the National Press Foundation in 2022.

Judges who chose García for the top honor cited his decision to publish a video obtained by Statesman journalist Tony Plohetski that showed multiple law enforcement officers stalling in a hallway at Robb Elementary for 77 minutes before a U.S. Border Patrol SWAT team confronted and killed the gunman. The footage disproved early claims by law enforcement and government leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, that officers had rushed in heroically to save lives.

After a federal review of the shooting, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Jan. 18 in Uvalde called the police response the “most significant failure” and said a Justice Department report concluded that had police rushed to confront the shooter, “lives would have been saved and people would have survived.”

A special Texas House committee impaneled to investigate the shooting released its report in July 2022 but would not have a Spanish version of the document for weeks, it said. For Uvalde — a community with more than 80% Hispanic or Latino residents and where half the residents age 5 or older speak a language other than English at home — García got to work to get Spanish speakers the House’s shooting report sooner.

García led the translation effort through a collaboration with Spanish-speaking journalists from USA Today and across the U.S. and in Mexico. The Statesman printed 10,000 copies of the report, and staffers, including García, distributed them for free in Uvalde at churches, restaurants, convenience stores, the library and other locations.

“The Statesman is so fortunate to have had Manny García leading our team and helping us become better journalists,” Managing Editor Courtney Sebesta said. “It’s an honor to help lead the Statesman and support the colleagues I’ve worked alongside for 22 years during this transition. Our Statesman journalists are extremely dedicated to their community and will continue to steadfastly report on issues that are important to Central Texans.”

García has previously held leadership roles at the Miami Herald, el Nuevo Herald, The Naples Daily Herald, USA Today and the ProPublica-Texas Tribune Investigative Initiative. He has also served journalism through the Investigative Reporters and Editors, the News Leaders Association and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

“We sincerely appreciate Manny’s contributions and wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors,” said Kristin Roberts, chief content officer of Gannett. “We are excited about the opportunity to find an Austin American-Statesman executive editor to serve the community and create the growth plan for the No. 1 source for Austin and Texas breaking news, politics and business.”