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Obituaries published in the June 2025 edition of the Texas Press Messenger.

Ronnie Dugger

AUSTIN – Ronnie Dugger, the founding editor of The Texas Observer once referred to as the “godfather of progressive journalism in Texas,” died May 27 in Austin. He was 95.

His death was related to Alzheimer’s disease complications, according to his daughter, New York Times health and science editor Celia W. Dugger.

No services are scheduled, according to Weed Corley Fish Funeral Home of Austin.

Dugger launched the Observer in 1954, when he was a 24-year-old recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He wanted to create not just a newspaper, but something to serve “the rolling, ongoing community of liberal and left, radical, some centrist and conservative, decent people, still moored in this still oligarchical political hellhole, beautiful Texas,” he wrote in the Observer in 2014, recalling the time when the publication was created.

He wrote the Observer’s mission statement, which is still displayed on its website today: “We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it.”

Gus Bova, the Observer’s editor-in-chief, described Dugger as a “trailblazing journalist in Texas.”

“He insisted on covering stories that, in the 1950s, the major daily papers wouldn’t touch. He drove around Texas in this broken-down little old car, finding stories of KKK violence in East Texas or issues faced by Mexican Americans in San Antonio or the border,” Bova said. “Now we see journalism like that...But then it was really something different that he started.”

During his 40-odd years with the Observer, Dugger worked as a writer, editor and publisher, and helped attract and guide some of the leading literary and journalistic talents of the day. They included Billy Lee Brammer, Molly Ivins, Willie Morris, Kaye Northcott and Jim Hightower.

He also wrote biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan as well as articles for national magazines and helped found progressive nonprofits.

The Austin-based Observer has been awarded multiple national awards in its 71-year history. 

In 2023, the publication almost shut down because of funding issues, but then it crowdsourced more than $300,000 and continued its operations.

Dugger married twice, first to Jean Williams and then to Patricia Blake, both of whom are deceased. He and his first wife had two children, Gary Dugger and Celia Dugger.

Dugger left Texas in the 1980s after he married writer and editor Patricia Blake. He spent almost 20 years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he inspired the populist movement Alliance for Democracy. After Blake died in 2010, Dugger returned to Austin.

In 2011, Dugger won recognition for his cumulative career at the annual George Polk Awards, given by Long Island University for “intrepid, bold and influential work of the reporters themselves, placing a premium on investigative work that is original, resourceful and thought-provoking.”