He always, always made even the best pieces better-and everything had to be the best in his eyes before it went into Texas Monthly, even a dumb gossip column I wrote many years ago. He hated the back-and-forth, “he said/she said” of newspaper reporting, and always pushed us toward what was right and true. He was also, of course, a great editor, one who reminded us constantly that our primary obligation was not to the rich or the powerful or even our subjects, whoever they were, but to our readers. “He has no ideas, but he knows the name of every precinct chairman in Texas,” he once said of our current governor, “having no ideas” being about the worst thing Paul could think or say about anyone. Paul scared the bejesus out of Texas politicians who knew he could always outthink them, see through them, and at least try to shame them into doing the right thing.
Swimming holes and chili were as coverage-worthy as governors and senators, and even Chevy Suburbans, which all came within his purview. More important, he knew what Texas should be and could be, and devoted his life to trying, heroically, to make it so.Īll these qualities made him, in turn, a great journalist, one who knew intuitively what Texans wanted-and needed-to read. He knew its tiniest towns, its best barbecue, its worst small-time pols and best baseball players. Galveston-born, educated at Rice University and the University of Texas law school, Paul loved Texas and knew more about it than anyone else on the Texas Monthly staff, where he worked as an editor and writer from its earliest days in 1974 until his retirement in 2015. With Paul Burka’s death Sunday night at age eighty, there are almost too many losses to count.
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