Why We Created Texapedia, the Encyclopedia of Texas Government
Honest Austin is a startup and a news publisher. Our day-to-day focus is covering Texas politics, local news in Austin, and business news. But about a year ago we began a side project that we believe ties in nicely with our core mission, while also serving a broader public good.
Texapedia is an encyclopedia of Texas government and civics. It features more than 115 articles about the state’s laws, institutions, and the various branches and layers of government. It’s meant to serve as a resource for students, teachers, and the general public.
The project started quietly, without any kind of a hard launch, and has grown incrementally. Texapedia now has more than 115 articles. By the end of the year we hope to add even more while also expanding and improving the quality of the existing articles.
Like Wikipedia, Texapedia is a continuous work in progress. But unlike Wikipedia, Texapedia is not a ‘wiki,’ meaning that the general public is not able to modify the articles at will. That helps to preserve the integrity of the content. Although we’d like Texapedia to be a collaborative effort with our readers, we’re taking a more traditional approach to quality control.
Another difference between Texapedia and larger encyclopedia projects like Wikipedia or The Handbook of Texas (a project of the state historical association) is that it’s more specialized and limited in scope. Texapedia covers current government topics, without much attention to historical topics. The limited scope helps to keep the project manageable and finite.
What’s in it for you?
As a news publisher, we cover the day-to-day of politicking, legislating, and electioneering. We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think it was important. But political coverage is only so helpful if the public doesn’t also have a base level of civic knowledge.
Our hope is that Texapedia will attract and serve readers of all political persuasions. For progressives and reformers, it’s all well and good to demand changes, but if you don’t now how things works in the first place, then it’s hard to make your case very intelligently. Likewise for conservatives. If conservatism means, at least in part, conserving a certain political culture or political order, then it helps to know what that political order is if you’re going to set about defending it.
Too many people today glean everything they know about politics and government from doomscrolling on Facebook, Reddit, or Twitter.
For our part, we stand to gain from the Texapedia project in a couple of ways. Texapedia isn’t directly monetized, apart from the standard display ads that appear on our site. But the site tends to attract a fair amount of search traffic, which can help us cultivate new readers for our brand as a whole (Honest Austin).
Secondly, Texapedia is a handy resource for existing readers. When we publish news articles about state and local government, we usually link to Texapedia articles that might help the readers understand the news story at hand. It works the other way round, too. Some encyclopedia articles necessarily reference news events, persons, new laws, etc, which we’ve written about on the news side of our site. This sort of internal linking, done well and within limits, isn’t just helpful for human readers, it also helps search engines and is therefore good for our website’s overall SEO.
Thirdly, Texapedia serves as a point of outreach to younger readers, raising brand awareness among a key prospective audience. We know that high schooler and college students have a lot going on and probably aren’t spending too much time reading the news. But if they’re going to become responsible, engaged citizens then they should start to ease into it at some point. Texapedia articles are written with this audience partially in mind. They’re meant to be readable, fairly concise, and sometimes perhaps even a little entertaining.
Finally, we think Texapedia aligns well with the overall Honest Austin brand. We’re a small startup, a local brand, but we’re headquartered in the capital of Texas. Our mission is to “provide information and ideas that contribute to the flourishing of the state through sound governance.” What better way to do that than to publish an encyclopedia of Texas government and civics?
We live in a time of noise, distraction, and divisiveness. Too many people today glean everything they know about politics and government from doomscrolling on Facebook, Reddit, or Twitter. In that kind of information environment, it’s easy to feel like things are spinning out of control. Texapedia is a back-to-the-basics initiative that we hope will help you feel a little more grounded.
Visit the Texapedia project here. Please share your feedback in the comments or send us a message if you have suggestions or ideas for how we can improve.
