Lou Dubose has covered Texas politics for twenty-five years. He is the co-author (with Molly Ivins) of two New York Times bestsellers, Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America. In 2003 he wrote (with Texas Monthly writer Jan Reid) The Hammer: Tom DeLay, God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress (released in paperback as The Hammer Comes Down: The Nasty, Brutish and Shortened Political Life of Tom DeLay). He has also written a political biography of Karl Rove.

Texas Observer executive editor Jake Bernstein has chronicled stories from Washington, D.C., to the jungles of Central America. As a weekly reporter in Miami, he covered the 2000 Florida recount and the Elián González story. While working as a freelancer in Guatemala and El Salvador, he wrote about the destruction of the rain forest and the end of guerrilla insurgencies. In Texas, Bernstein's work on Tom DeLay's campaign-finance scandals has won multiple journalism awards.