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March 30, 2025

Monday Musings #12: Trump Invites Bigcitysmalltown to White House Podcast Summit

Declaring that mainstream media is on life support and not expected to survive his second term in office, President Trump announced plans to convene podcasters from across the country at a White House summit in the coming weeks. “Or possible …

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March 24, 2025

Monday Musings #11: Andrés Andujar - San Antonio Placemaker

Not many of us will complete our careers with the certain knowledge our work has made San Antonio a better place to live, work and play and will endure. My work and privilege as a longtime journalist in this city has allowed me to meet many of the p…

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March 17, 2025

Monday Musings #10: Can the City of San Antonio and the State’s Top Elected Leaders Find Common Ground?

An unexpected opportunity has developed for Mayor Ron Nirenberg in his final months in office, and other civic and business leaders, to grasp an olive branch extended by Gov. Greg Abbott in his Feb. 2 State of the State speech. In the speech, Abbot…

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March 10, 2025

Monday Musings #9: 10 Big Questions for San Antonio’s Mayoral Candidates—See What We’re Asking

We’ve got questions for the 27 people who ponied up $100 to run for mayor in the May 3 city election. For those of you who sent in or shared questions, thank you. Several were placed into our final questionnaire, which we sent to the campaign …

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March 3, 2025

Monday Musings #8: A $5 Billion Bet on San Antonio’s Future—Who’s Paying?

🚨NEWS ALERT: Longtime Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff shook up the mayor’s race last Thursday with an enthusiastic endorsement of tech executive Beto Altamirano for mayor. That has to add serious energy to the campaign just days after the…

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Feb. 24, 2025

Monday Musings #7: Why Running for San Antonio Mayor Should Cost More Than $100

San Antonio has a problem with how it conducts local elections, namely the low $100 fee it requires of citizens who want to get their name on a local election ballot. As Andrea Drusch reported in the San Antonio Report last week, that fee has not ri…

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Feb. 16, 2025

Monday Musings #6: How Should We Cover the Mayor’s Race?

I’m starting this week’s Monday Musings with a question for readers, and I hope you’ll share your thoughts. How deeply should our bigcitysmalltown podcast cover the San Antonio mayor’s race? What might seem like a question w…

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Feb. 10, 2025

Monday Musings #5: The U.S.-Mexico Relationship in Uncertain Times

Last Monday was Día de la Constitución in Mexico. As my wife Monika Maeckle and I gazed out the window of our northbound bus, entering the country’s Bajio on our way from Mexico City to San Miguel de Allende, we passed the UNESCO…

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Feb. 3, 2025

Monday Musings #4: Crime in San Antonio: Why Perception Doesn’t Match Reality

If there is a single facet of public opinion where perception often triumphs over reality, it’s crime. Examine any poll where local voters are asked to prioritize their concerns, and crime almost always finishes first.  Even when it&rsqu…

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Jan. 27, 2025

Monday Musings #3: UTSA-UT Health San Antonio Merger Two Big Steps Closer

If you are new to this newsletter, and aren’t we all?, I wrote ​last week​ about the importance of UTSA growth to the future of the city, and in particular, this year’s planned merger of the two institutions into a single, highly diversi…

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