Texas Relays, the Largest Predominantly Black Event in Austin, Returns

byKevin Malcolm Jr.

For the first time in three years, more than 5,000 high school, college and professional track athletes and tens of thousands of spectators from around the country came together for the Texas Relays.

Professional Bull Riding is Coming to Austin

byKevin Malcolm Jr.

AUSTIN, Texas – College sports have thrived for decades in the city that bleeds orange and white. However, over the past two decades, the pride in green and black has grown with the arrival of professional hockey, soccer, and now bull riding wearing those colors.  The Austin Gamblers are a professional bull riding team that […]

West Campus Starbucks Employees Protest Union Busting

byStephanie Molina

AUSTIN, Texas – Starbucks baristas gathered at the West Campus Starbucks at the intersection of 24th and Nueces Street on Saturday to hold a demonstration against union busting in their store. The baristas announced a petition to unionize in early March making them the first in Austin to do so.  Amanda Garcia, a UT student […]

Texas Family Among Many in the US, Western Europe Taking in Ukrainian Refugees

byJennifer Errico

Diana Mykoliv woke up early on the morning of Feb. 24 for flight attendant training in the United Arab Emirates. Her hair clipped back and uniform pressed, she headed out her apartment door when she received a text from her mother.

“It’s happening, daughter.” The message in Ukrainian stopped her in her tracks.

“My heart just fell from my chest,” Mykoliv, a Ukrainian native, said. “The worst fears I could have ever imagined of the situation were just brought to light. I couldn’t believe it.”

The same morning at 5 a.m. in Kyiv, Mykoliv’s fiancé Oleksandr awoke to explosions of ballistic missiles. In a frenzy, he packed documents, money, some clothes and a Stephen King book, then headed to the train station to flee the city among the sound of alarms.

“I couldn’t sleep for three days,” Oleksandr said. “Air alarms sound every day, sometimes for hours and it just leaves me shaking.”

Mykoliv, 3,000 miles away from her home, felt hopeless as Russian forces marched into her country, uprooting and threatening the lives of her friends, family and fiancé. According to the BBC, President Biden and the policymakers in the European Union responded by issuing severe sanctions targeting four of Russia’s largest banks, its oil and gas industry, and Western exports (especially technology) to the country.

Conservative UT-Austin Students Say They Often Feel Marginalized by Peers

byFallon Sheffield

A number of conservative students at the University of Texas at Austin say they feel marginalized for their political beliefs. In the era of growing intolerance, where labels such as “woke politics” and “culture wars” makes “political correctness” seem almost polite, conservative students on college campuses, including UT-Austin, also say they often find themselves branded […]

Protesters Rally in Austin Against U.S. Supreme Court Threat to Roe v. Wade

byZacharia E. Washington

Several hundred protesters marched from the Texas Capitol to the United States Federal Courthouse in Austin in protest.

4/20 Rally at Governor’s Mansion Calls for Marijuana Decriminalization

byKevin Malcolm Jr.

Marijuana advocates waved flags and smoked weed outside of the Texas Governor’s Mansion on 4/20, a day known as a holiday for celebrating marijuana, to call for further decriminalization of the drug.  “We can help, you know, liberate people who are in prison for nonviolent crime,” said Colin Kerrigan, a civil engineering student at the […]

Reporting Texas TV – April 28, 2022

byReporting Texas TV Staff

Journalism students from Moody College at the University of Texas produced their fifth newscast of the semester on April 28, 2022. This week’s reports include efforts to save several gay bars from demolition, the Texas Community Music Festival‘s return after a lengthy COVID hiatus, and an Earth Day clean up hosted by kayak companies.

Restoration of Slave Quarters Will Help Austin More Fully Tell Its History, Experts Say

byPamela Hall Vance

Restoration of the only slave quarters still intact in Austin can lead to an “expanded narrative” of the city’s past that aids in understanding and racial equity, historic preservation experts said Saturday at the Neill-Cochran House Museum. 

“We tell these stories, we preserve these sites, because if the sites aren’t there, you can easily say that never happened,” said Joe McGill, founder of the South Carolina-based Slave Dwelling Project. “It’s necessary for those slave dwellings to stay, because it tells the whole story. We want to know about all this.”

A 12-month restoration of the slave quarters behind the Neill-Cochran House at 2310 San Gabriel St. in the West Campus neighborhood is set to begin this month. The project, called “Reckoning with the Past: Telling the Untold Story of Race in Austin,” will include new interpretive programming for visitors and prompted Saturday’s panel discussion at the museum.

Texas Community Music Festival Returns After Two-Year Hiatus

byMadeline Salinas

AUSTIN, Texas — A few weeks prior to the 15th Texas Community Music Festival in 2020, organizers learned that they would have to cancel the annual event. “We kind of had to put the brakes on everything,” said festival organizer Kat Brotherton. “Nobody really had any idea, at that point, how long this break was going […]

Gay Bars Threatened By Downtown Development May Be Saved By Cultural-Historical Significance

bySamuel Stark

AUSTIN, Texas — Nestled among skyscrapers in Austin’s booming downtown area is The Iron Bear, a beloved gay bar on West Sixth Street. Bengie Beshear, a co-owner of the venue, describes it as welcoming to all types of gay men. “The Iron Bear is place that catches the people that don’t really fit in the […]

Kayak Rental Businesses Hold Earth Day Clean Up

byTerry Gutierrez

AUSTIN, Texas – Rowing Dock hosted an Earth Day Clean Up at Lady Bird Lake on Friday, where volunteers could clear the area on foot or by kayak.  The Earth Day Clean Up marked an expansion of Rowing Dock’s weekly Kayak Clean Up Crew, which launched last year.  Friday’s clean up was conducted in partnership with […]

Fiesta’s Return Proved San Antonio Still Knows How To Celebrate Culture

byTaryn Courville

Bryan Campa doesn’t attend Fiesta for the food or the alcohol, though he doesn’t begrudge people who do. To him, Fiesta is a chance to celebrate his culture. Fiesta, a festival that lasts for 11 days during April, honors the Battle of the Alamo and Battle of San Jacinto and celebrates the Mexican-American and other […]

Lawmakers Press National Guard Leaders after Soldier’s Death

byJill Ament

Texas lawmakers grilled the top brass in charge of the state’s border security operation Wednesday following the death of a National Guardsman who drowned trying to save migrants in the Rio Grande.  Spc. Bishop Evans, a 22-year-old from Arlington, went missing Friday at a border crossing near Eagle Pass, after he attempted to rescue two […]

Reporting Texas TV – April 21, 2022

byReporting Texas TV Staff

Journalism students from Moody College at the University of Texas made their fourth newscast of the semester on April 21, 2022. This week student journalists report on efforts to prevent dating violence and assist victims, the opening of a much-needed new swimming facility, and a UT student’s fundraiser to repair a school in El Salvador.

Addressing Dating Violence in High School and College

byEniola Longe

AUSTIN, Texas — Finnley Willms, president of the Texas Advocacy Project’s Teen Ambassadors of Hope, had no idea teen dating violence was such a common issue until she volunteered. With a mission to end dating and domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking in the state, Texas Advocacy Project (TAP) provides free legal services to survivors […]

Acclaim for ‘CODA’ a Sign that Times Are Changing for the Deaf Community

byMarina Garcia

Students at the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin, hope acclaim for “CODA” is just the beginning for better representation of the deaf community and opens the door for more opportunities for deaf individuals in the film industry.

Austinites Dance With Dogs To Encourage Adoptions From Animal Center

byVeronica Apodaca

Dances for Dogs and People Who Walk Them, an event held in cooperation with Forklift Danceworks, aimed to encourage adoptions from the Austin Animal Center, the largest no-kill animal shelter in the nation.

With White Tablecloths and a Storied History, Headliners Club Seeks to Maintain Relevance in Changing Austin

byAndrew Logan

Founded in 1954, the Headliners Club has remained a powerful institution in Austin for almost 70 years despite the many changes in the city’s demographics, and its leadership is confident it can sustain that relevance as Austin experiences rapid growth led by the tech industry. 

Members include the state’s most prominent leaders in government, business, higher education and journalism. While critics say such organizations can reinforce class privilege and in practice often exclude people of color, the Headliners Club has maintained its reputation as an exclusive stronghold of the elite in Texas’ politically progressive state capital.

New Pool Creates New Opportunity

byKevin Malcolm, Jr.

AUSTIN – In his final months before becoming a collegiate swimmer, Dietrich Hagenau will train at the new Eanes Aquatic Center at Westlake High School. Ever since Hagenau moved to Austin from California, he has been fighting to get a new pool built for himself and his teammates. “It’s very rewarding to hear that we […]