Thornton wrote, in July 2009:[13] In Micro 101, we learn that such "public goods" as clean air and national defense will not be produced in sufficient supply exclusively by market forces.

Allow for the sake of argument that what I'll call "capital J" Journalism – journalism that takes on serious, complex issues and puts them in the context of how citizens interact with their government – is such a good.Thornton and his wife, Julie, seeded the venture with $1 million of their own money[14][15] to fund the organization's nascent operations and began to raise money from around the state and around the country from individuals, corporations, and foundations.

Thornton stated in January 2010, "In the coming months, we intend to become far more sophisticated in the way we market corporate sponsorships of both our site and our events series, TribLive.

[14] Smith and Ramsey subsequently hired several well-known members of the Capitol press corps to join the team: Matt Stiles, of the Houston Chronicle;[21] Emily Ramshaw, of the Dallas Morning News;[22] Brandi Grissom, of the El Paso Times; Elise Hu, of KVUE-TV;[23] and Reeve Hamilton, who covered the Texas Legislature for The Texas Observer.

[15] By the time The Texas Tribune debuted on November 3, 2009,[16] it had raised $3.6 million from more than 1,000 individual donors and at least fifty corporate sponsors.

[15] The Texas Tribune has been actively developing an open source publishing platform along with The Bay Citizen, specifically tailored for nonprofit news organizations like itself.

[27] Brian Thevenot, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who was formerly special projects editor for The Times Picayune of New Orleans, joined the staff in October 2009.