Board Members
JOHN REETZ
President and Executive Director
John is co-owner of Media Solutions Partners, an Atlanta-based consulting firm focused on helping media companies’ transition to a successful and strong digital future. Recent clients include WebMD, The New York Times Co., Canadian Press, GateHouse Media, Gannett, Digital First Media, TapClicks, ClickFuel, Crowdynews, Digital Sherpa, Network Communications Inc., Community Newspapers Inc. and other media-focused companies. John’s career includes stints in community journalism, reporting and editing, and newsroom management for Cox Media Group, where he led a group that supported the digital efforts at 40-plus websites for Cox. Prior to working at Cox, John was the Assistant Managing Editor of News Operations at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he was responsible for copy desks, design, newsroom technology, newsroom operations. He was chairman of the AJC’s Olympics Operations Committee, coordinating a Cox-wide effort involving several thousand employees focused on Olympics publication efforts. He also was Managing Editor of the Gwinnett Daily News, a New York Times-owned paper. John also worked as a reporter and then city editor at the Savannah Morning News, ran a tri-weekly in the mountains of Western North Carolina, ran a weekly in Lyndon Johnson’s hometown of Johnson City and owned a weekly newspaper in East Texas. John is a journalism graduate of the College of Communication at the University of Texas. While attending the University of Texas, John was a reporter, copy editor, assistant managing editor and managing editor at The Daily Texan. On his office desk he uses as a paperweight the hot-metal type box which daily proclaimed The Texan’s independent status on the editorial page all through the Texan’s fight for editorial independence in 1971.
STEVE WISCH
Vice President
Steve is a former journalist and a practicing attorney in Houston. He served as staff counsel for House Majority Leader Jim Wright in 1974-75. He has also worked in law practices on cases related to civil and criminal defense and family trial law; on issues related to access to health care; and on health, life, disability, long-term care and pension cases for individuals and medical providers under Texas and federal law, with a special interest in mental health parity issues. He has written for the Texas Jewish Post, the Texas Observer, the Austin American-Statesman and the Fort Worth Press. He has taught at UT Austin, Texas Christian University and the University of Houston Law Center.
KATIE CHANG
Spring 2025 Managing Editor
Katie Chang is a junior at the University of Texas at Austin, pursuing degrees in Plan II Honors, Management Information Systems, and Urban Studies, with a minor in History. Chang will serve as the managing editor of The Daily Texan for the Spring 2025 semester, after four semesters in the Life & Arts and Photo departments, and one as an Associate Managing Editor. As Managing Editor, she hopes to strengthen the Texan’s analytical foundation with data reporting and improve audience engagement across digital platforms. Outside of the Texan, Chang has worked as a research project manager at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and a finance intern at Texas Instruments. Chang’s interests include urban planning, writing, music, and sustainability.
MARTY CRUTSINGER
Board Member
Now retired from The Associated Press, Marty Crutsinger played a vital role at the AP, chronicling a gallery of transformative events. A reporter known for his steady nerves, breadth of knowledge and boundless energy, Marty chased stories that brought him to extraordinary moments in history. From plane crashes, hurricanes and cruise-ship fires in Miami to Mikhail Gorbachev’s first appearance at a Group of Seven global finance meeting in London, from coverage of city hall at his first reporting job in Jacksonville, Florida, to the Florida state house to the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, Marty’s career has hopscotched across a half-century of assignments that required smarts, versatility and quick-thinking ingenuity. His early reporting ranged from government to the horrific (the Ted Bundy murders and the Jim Jones-led mass suicides) to the shocking (the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan) to the classic Washington scandal (James Watt’s self-destruction as the bigotry-spewing Reagan Interior Secretary – the result of a Crutsinger scoop) From the Carter administration to the Biden administration, Marty’s reporting has served a couple of generations of AP readers, viewers and listeners. For the past 37 years, Marty has been a leading chronicler of economics, with a mix of assignments that comprised the Treasury and the Fed as they defused financial catastrophes; meetings of global finance leaders and dozens of market-moving economic indicators. Marty’s tenure spanned eight presidents from Jimmy Carter to Joe Biden to five Fed leaders from Paul Volcker to Jerome Powell and 13 Treasury secretaries from Donald Regan to Janet Yellen. When the 2008 financial crisis threatened to topple the entire banking system, Marty labored many weekends that fall from the Treasury press room, ricocheting from the government’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to Lehman Brothers’ collapse to the day Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson summoned the executives of America’s biggest banks to pressure them to accept government aid packages to protect the entire financial system by avoiding inciting panic at any one bank. Marty retired in January 2022 after a 50-year career in journalism which began in 1971 after he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. He majored in government while taking courses in journalism and working as a reporter and editor on the Daily Texan.
WYNNE DAVIS
Board Member
Wynne Davis is a digital producer and reporter at National Public Radio in Washington D.C., where she works on All things Considered and NPR’s digital content team. Every day, she communicates with hundreds of member stations as All Things Considered gets ready to air, alerting them to stories that will be covered, breaking news situations and other key information. She also edits the day’s content and posts it on social media channels.While attending the University of Texas, she wrote for The Daily Texan’s news department, covering crime and public safety and served as news editor during Spring 2016. She earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations in 2016. After completing internships at the Austin American-Statesman, The Dallas Morning News and the Dow Jones News Fund, she interned at NPR before joining the organization full time.
STANLEY FARRAR
Board Member
After graduation with a philosophy degree from UT Austin, Stanley worked as a photographer and photo director for Texas Student Publications. He then went to the Associated Press Washington D.C. bureau as a picture editor and came back to Austin as Director of Photography and Graphics at the American Statesman. After seven years at the Statesman he began a 25-year stint with The Seattle Times. He began as Assistant Managing Editor for photography, design and graphics and took on representing the newsroom on company-wide technology changes. He was a member of a small team which began the first online operations at the Times. Stanley served for 10 years as managing editor and executive producer for seattletimes.com and for his last three years in Seattle was project manager for the implementation of a new newsroom publishing system. Since retiring and moving back to Austin he has served on the board of the Austin Center for Photography and done volunteer work for the Hill Country Land Trust.
GAYLON FINKLEA HECKER
Board Member
Gaylon Finklea Hecker was born in Liberty County, Texas, and entered The University of Texas at Austin in 1968. She worked as a reporter and editorial page assistant on The Daily Texan and graduated with a bachelor of journalism degree. Today she is a member of the Friends of The Daily Texan and the Longhorn Alumni Band. Upon graduation she worked as a general assignments reporter for the San Antonio Light. Later she simultaneously served as a legislative aide to four state representatives. She continued her journalism career as a feature writer for the San Antonio Express-News. In San Antonio also, she worked as associate editor of SA: The Magazine; editor of Seniors: San Antonio Style; was a contributor to Newsweek; and also edited The Jewish Journal. Along with fellow journalist Marianne Odom, she became interested in oral history. They began collaborating on oral history interviews in 1981, when the value of that research method was just beginning to be widely recognized. In 1983, they formed a partnership called Living Legacies devoted to collecting and preserving oral histories. The pair collaborated on The Businesses That Built San Antonio in 1986, a book of oral histories of business leaders. The book was co-sponsored by the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce to commemorate the Texas Sesquicentennial. Relocating to Austin in 1988, Finklea Hecker was publications editor at Research & Planning Consultants. She edited The Jewish Outlook for a decade and worked in corporate communications at the Lower Colorado River Authority for another decade. She was a technical documentation editor for Motorola. Since retirement, she continues to be a full-time author. Since 2013 she has published five books on various aspects of Texas history. Most recently Finklea Hecker and Odom collaborated on their second book, Growing Up in the Lone Star State: Notable Texans Remember Their Childhoods. It features a collection of 47 oral history interviews with some of the state’s most famous personalities. Published by the Briscoe Center for American History, under Tower Books, at UT in 2021, it is in its second printing.
McKENZIE HENNINGSEN
Editor-in-Chief
McKenzie Henningsen is a senior English and advertising double major from Austin, Texas. She currently serves as the Editor in Chief after previously serving as the Associate Opinion editor and Associate Copy Desk Chief.
CHASE KARACOSTAS
Board Member
Chase Karacostas is the email campaign developer for KUT News and KUTX 98.9 in Austin, where he manages all email communications for both stations, from newsletters to fundraising to membership correspondence. Previously, he has worked for McClatchy newspapers in South Carolina, covering the environment, tourism, the LGBTQ+ community and health care. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020, where he worked at The Daily Texan for all four years in roles ranging from photographer to news editor to projects editor.
GRIFF SINGER
Board Member
During the past six decades, Griff Singer been a printer, a reporter, editor, teacher and newspaper consultant. While an undergraduate student at UT, he was a reporter and day editor for The Daily Texan. Then at 6:30 p.m., five nights a week, he worked as a printer in the composing room. His first journalism job was news editor at the Arlington Citizen-Journal (1956-59). After serving as a general assignments reporter for the Dallas Morning News, Griff covered county government and courts. In early 1961, he was named an assistant city editor. Singer returned to UT Austin in 1967 to teach in the School of Journalism. During his teaching career, Singer taught courses in reporting, copyediting, newspaper layout and design. He organized and team-taught the first offering of computer-assisted reporting and later sports writing. Singer’s resume features stints at the San Antonio Light, the Houston Chronicle, Freedom Communications, Inc., the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Dow Jones News Fund’s Center for Editing Excellence. In 2016, he was inducted into the Texas Newspaper Foundation Hall of Fame.
MICHAEL LAZENBY JR.
Board Member
Michael Lazenby Jr. is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin studying economics, business and government, and throughout his time at the University, he has held various executive positions on and off campus. These positions include his writing and leadership roles at The Daily Texan, his board and presidential tenure at Texas Student Media, being a member of the Friends of The Daily Texan since last year along with founding a financial analysis website (with lifetime viewership standing at around 30 million since its founding around two-and-a-half years ago), since growing it into a viable business. He is also the founder of a college admissions consulting company, while also maintaining a host of other executive leadership roles on campus with the University’s Student Foundation (Vice President of Operations), Business Ethics Team (BET) (Vice President), the Texas Economic Journal (Head Writer and board member), University Housing & Dining (Chairman of Appreciation Subcommittee and Student Manager of largest on-campus dining facility), among other previously held positions.
MADLIN MEKELBURG
Board Member
Madlin is a reporter for Bloomberg News, where she writes about legal affairs in the South. She has covered state and national politics in Texas since 2015, including as the chief politics reporter for the Austin American-Statesman. Previously, she truth-tested claims made by public officials for PolitiFact Texas and worked as the Austin correspondent for the El Paso Times/USA Today Network. She also completed fellowships at the Dallas Morning News and the Texas Tribune. In 2018, she was awarded the Friends of The Daily Texan Rising Star Award. Madlin graduated from the University of Texas in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a minor in French. At The Daily Texan, she worked as a senior reporter, associate news editor and special ventures editor. She also spent a semester co-hosting The Daily Texan podcast.
MEGAN MENCHACA
Board Member
Megan is a higher education reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, where she covers the University of Texas and other Central Texas colleges. She also regularly contributes to coverage of K-12 news in Austin and Austin ISD, one of the largest school districts in Texas. Megan previously has worked at the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, The Texas Tribune and other media organizations in Texas. Her past experience includes reporting on the Texas Legislature, audience engagement/social media work and copy editing. In her current position, she has worked with The Daily Texan and other student media outlets in Austin to establish a program providing the opportunity to have articles by student journalists republished in the Statesman with credit. She held 12 different positions during her tenure at The Daily Texan, including news editor, director of digital strategy and managing editor. Under her leadership, the Texan received honors from the College Media Association and the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association as one of the best newspapers in its category. She earned bachelor’s degrees in journalism and government from the University of Texas in 2021.
FORREST MILBURN
Board Member
Forrest Milburn is the director of audience at the Houston Landing, a nonprofit digital newsroom serving the Houston region, where he leads strategy around distribution, audience growth and reader engagement. Before coming to the Landing, Forrest was the senior audience growth and engagement producer at the Miami Herald in sunny South Florida. At the Herald, Forrest led the newsroom’s strategy with reader callouts and steered its flagship accounts on Instagram, Reddit and TikTok, while also having a hand in newsletters, alerts and story pitches to news aggregators. Before moving to Florida, Forrest was a lifelong Texan, having grown up in the North Dallas suburbs. During his time at The Daily Texan, Forrest served in many roles across the newsroom, including senior reporter, news editor, associate social media editor, and, finally, managing editor. Despite originally wanting to pursue a career as a political reporter, Forrest’s time cutting his teeth in the Daily Texan’s social media department was the spark that led him to pursue a career in audience journalism. Once he was in a leadership role, Forrest sought to build out the Texan’s digital infrastructure, from strengthening its social media team to building new avenues for reader engagement. As managing editor, he created the paper’s Newsletters department after redesigning and relaunching its daily newsletter and helped ideate the Texan’s Diversity and Inclusion Board and director of digital strategy position. Forrest studied journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and was a 2023 Friends of the Texan Rising Star recipient, as well as a 2019 Friends of the Texan Achievement award winner.
JOHN POPE
Board Member
John Pope, a New Orleans reporter since 1973, was a member of The Times-Picayune’s team that won two Pulitzer Prizes in 2006 for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Texas, where he worked on The Daily Texan, the student newspaper, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. A contributing writer for The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, Pope is the author of “Getting Off at Elysian Fields,” an anthology of his obituaries and funeral stories, and a co-author of “Building on the Past: Saving Historic New Orleans.” He is serving his second six-year term on the Phi Beta Kappa Senate, and he is a member of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers, whose members refer to themselves as Grimmies.
SAMI SPARBER
Board Member
Sami Sparber is a real estate reporter and newsletter writer at Axios, where she’s worked as a journalist since March 2022. Sparber has previously reported for Dallas Morning News, the Wall Street Journal, The Texas Tribune, the Houston Chronicle and various other media outlets, where her coverage focused largely on state politics. Before graduating in 2021, she held several positions at The Daily Texan, including projects editor, news editor and a senior news reporter covering local and state politics. She also led the paper through the COVID-19 pandemic and social justice protests as managing editor during summer 2020.
PAUL WATLER
Board Member
Paul Watler earned a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Texas in 1976 and was an award-winning newspaper reporter before returning to Austin for law school. He earned his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law in 1981 where he was a member of Texas Law Review. Watler has devoted much of his legal career to representing Texas newspapers, broadcasters and journalists in trials and appeals of First Amendment, libel, privacy and freedom-of-information suits. Two cases he successfully argued in the Texas Supreme Court, WFAA-TV, Inc. v. McLemore and City of Garland v. Dallas Morning News, are among the most frequently cited authorities in Texas on libel and public information, respectively. His media clients have been recognized with the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and the rarely bestowed Columbia-Du Pont Gold Baton for news reporting projects for which Watler provided First Amendment counsel. In 2007, Watler was named as the “Go To Lawyer” for media litigation by Texas Lawyer. Many of his media cases have been high-profile, including litigation related to the JFK assassination, the Branch Davidian shoot-out in Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing. His media clients have included major metropolitan and national newspapers, magazines, and wire services, as well as television stations. Watler has long been active in giving back to the media and legal professions. He served as president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas in 1996-99 and as a board member of that First Amendment group since 1988. Watler was elected to serve as a member of the board of directors of the Texas Association of Broadcasters and North Texas Public Broadcasting (KERA). He has served as chairman of the Public Affairs Committee of the State Bar of Texas and of the Media Relations Committee of the Dallas Bar Association.