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The Fort Worth Report is happy to announce their new managing editor, Babs Rodriguez. (Camilo Diaz | Fort Worth Report)
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Barbara “Babs” Rodriguez, Fort Worth native and longtime writer and editor, is the new managing editor of the Fort Worth Report, CEO and Publisher Chris Cobler announced Friday.She steps up from her yearlong stint as content editor at the nonprofit and nonpartisan publication.“Babs has added an impressive degree of professionalism, editing and community knowledge to our newsroom,” Cobler said. “We’re excited to see what she will do next in her new role.”

Taken with the transportive power of words from age 5, when she created a library and reading “room” in a hall linen closet, Rodriguez graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in literature and a minor in journalism. 

“The plan was to graduate with a journalism degree, but the dean of communications would not allow me to take copyediting and advanced reporting in the same semester. I wanted to graduate early, so I changed my degree and married a Panhandle newspaper owner’s son on graduation day — my new father-in-law was pleased with my decision,” she said. 

Babs Rodriguez, center, in 1972, when she held her first editing position — on the Paschal High School annual staff. (Courtesy photo | Babs Rodriguez)

Rodriguez enrolled in graduate school, but was hired after her first semester by Texas Monthly editor Bill Broyles as startup editor for the magazine’s book publishing division. 

“I met Bill and editor Greg Curtis in an emergency room, where my then brother-in-law Dick Reavis, a wild and wooly writer for the magazine, was taken following an almost fatal motorcycle crash. Bill and Greg visited Dick regularly and always checked in with me for updates on his condition. Bill later told me that they hired me to work at Texas Monthly because I was always on hand with a concise, fact-filled update,” Rodriguez said.

“I have always been a reporter by nature, both endlessly curious about people, places and things, but also a storyteller.”

When Rodriguez left Texas Monthly, she became a well-known food and travel writer who wrote for that magazine and others, along with newspapers across the country and in Europe. After a couple years as a food editor at Rodale Press in Pennsylvania, she moved to Berlin as the Wall came down. She lived in Germany and Switzerland for five years, commuting to New York City to act as editor-at-large for startup magazine FamilyFun and to Massachusetts to launch Honeymoon magazine.

Recognized as a mentor and at ease with the procedures of both book and magazine publishing, Rodriguez was recruited by Rice University to direct the Rice University Publishing Program, and acted as executive director for a decade. She remains in touch with former students, many who’ve gone on to careers in all aspects of publishing. 

Before returning to Fort Worth, Rodriguez worked as editorial director of a major book packager in Seattle and as a freelance editor and writer for publications as diverse as Vogue, Playboy, L.A. Style and European House & Home. 

After 14 moves to two countries and seven states, always working as a writer and an editor — and for a time as a literary agent — Rodriguez returned to Fort Worth in 2001 and worked for a year in school and community relations for the Fort Worth Independent School District. She later became a columnist for Texas Highways magazine and contributor to The Dallas Morning News, where she published stories on architecture, food, travel and design. 

She has edited dozens of cookbooks, attended culinary schools in Mexico, Switzerland and Ireland, and is the author of “The Interstate Gourmet: Texas and the Southwest” and was contracted by Texas Monthly Studio to write the “Central Market 20th Anniversary Cookbook.” 

After a year as the home and garden contributor at Indulge Magazine, a Star-Telegram publication, Rodriguez accepted the position of editor at lifestyle magazine 360West in 2013. Over the next decade she also edited the ancillary publications. Rodriguez was tapped to start 817HOME magazine for the company in 2017.

In 2023, Rodriguez was hired by Fort Worth Report as content editor, a turn she says was unexpected and challenging in new ways.

“Editing news stories and working with an extremely talented staff of reporters has allowed me to focus on my hometown in a way that I find very satisfying. Hyperlocal news is important for all the right reasons, not the least of which is the preservation of democracy.

“Spending my days with bright, curious people, all of whom are devoted to reporting deeply, widely and fairly on the place where I grew up is a remarkable punctuation point in my career. Nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news that is free to all readers is the modern intersection of curiosity and revelation — who knew that’s where my linen closet office would lead me — and that’s what’s important to me. I am delighted to dig in even deeper as the new managing editor at Fort Worth Report.”