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The Magnolia Standard
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The Magnolia Standard

The Paper

About & Masthead

Local. Independent. Honest.

The Magnolia Standard is a bilingual, digital-first local newspaper for Magnolia, Pinehurst, Tomball, and Greater Montgomery County, Texas. We celebrate this place — its families, businesses, churches, schools, teams, and traditions — every single week, in English and in Spanish.

Roughly four out of every five Standard stories are positive: founder profiles, anniversary spotlights, Friday-night Bulldog wins, scholarship roundups, fundraiser recaps, restaurant features, weekend roundups, neighbor-of-the-month celebrations. The fifth story is our accountability lane — plain-English coverage of City Council, the school board, MUDs, and the county. We celebrate good work there too, and we ask honest questions when something doesn't add up. More on the 80/20 mix.

We are independent. We are local. Our office is in Magnolia — not Houston, not Austin. We answer to our readers and our neighbors.

A stealth launch — by design

For our first three months, every story we publish is bylined "The Magnolia Standard." No personal names. The paper is the byline.

This is intentional. We want the paper to prove itself — its standards, its tone, its 80/20 commitment, its bilingual cadence — before we put a team in front of it. Local journalism gets judged by names too quickly. By opening with an institutional byline, we ask readers to evaluate the work on its own merits first.

On the first day of our fourth month, we will publish the founding masthead in full: publisher, editor of record, production lead, photos, and direct email addresses. From that point forward, the masthead is permanent. Op-eds will be signed by their authors. Most news coverage will continue to run under "The Magnolia Standard" as our standing institutional byline — that part doesn't change. The work will be the same. You'll just know our names.

The reveal is also when our political-advertising firewall becomes fully operational and when the paper begins seeking pickup from other Texas outlets. Both of those require named accountability, and both kick in at the same moment.

The 80/20 Standard

Most local papers either drown a community in fluff or drown it in scandal. We chose a third path: 80% celebration, 20% accountability — by design, by ratio, and on purpose. Magnolia has enough good news in any given week to fill four out of five stories on its own. The fifth story is our promise that when a public decision deserves scrutiny, somebody local is reading the agenda and asking the question.

Bilingual matters for the same reason. Magnolia is English and Spanish. A paper that only serves half the community is not local journalism — it is a marketing pamphlet. Every Standard story runs in both languages, the same week, every week.

Publishing Principles

  • We celebrate first. Most issues lead with neighbors, milestones, openings, and wins. If your shop hit ten years, your scout earned Eagle, your team won state, your church fed two hundred families — we want to write it down.
  • We cover the meetings. City Council, MISD school board, county commissioners, MUD boards. Someone shows up. Notes get taken. Plain-English coverage gets written.
  • We confirm before we publish. Two independent sources for any significant claim. Documents over rumor.
  • We protect sources. Tips come in confidentially and stay that way.
  • We open under an institutional byline. Every story is signed "The Magnolia Standard" for our first three months. The founding masthead becomes public at the start of month four. Read why.
  • We correct mistakes openly. Errors get a dated correction. Always.
  • We don't sell editorial coverage. Advertising buys advertising. It does not buy news placement.
  • We publish in English and Spanish. Every story, every week, both languages.

Ethics Policy

Editorial decisions are made by news staff with no input from advertising or sales. Sponsored content is clearly marked as such, published under a separate URL prefix, and styled distinctly from news. Political advertising carries the disclaimer required by Texas Election Code §255.001 — "Political advertising paid for by [committee]" — on every piece, audio, video, and text.

The founder and publisher recuses himself from editorial and advertising decisions in any race in which he is a candidate. A designated editor-of-record handles all political coverage and political-advertising decisions in any such cycle.

Corrections

Found something we got wrong? Email corrections@themagnoliastandard.news. We respond within one business day. Corrections appear at the bottom of the affected article with the date and a one-sentence summary of the change.

Contact

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