Olivia Ruth Messer

Messer is the founding editor of next generation Texas news site The Barbed Wire. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Marie Claire, Slate, MSNBC, The 19th*, and The Daily Beast, as well as numerous Texas publications. She has contributed editing and fact-checking work to New York Times-bestselling book projects and reported groundbreaking investigations on crime and politics that sparked concrete policy changes; she was the first reporter to name the identity of the Golden State Killer in 2018. Under her leadership, The Barbed Wire was a finalist for the 2025 A-LIST Awards in the Creative & Digital Media Disruptor category, which “recognizes a startup or scale-up pushing the boundaries of creativity, storytelling, and audience engagement through digital media, entertainment, gaming, or immersive experiences.” In 2026, she was named an Austin Under 40 finalist for Journalist of the Year.

During her more than five years at The Daily Beast, “The Cheat Sheet,” which she wrote for, won Best Email Newsletter at the 2018 Digiday Publishing Awards. For two years prior, she served as a local crime reporter for The Waco Tribune-Herald, where her coverage of the 2015 biker shooting was recognized by the Texas Managing Editors Excellence in Journalism Awards for First Place in Deadline Writing. She was later featured in the Vice documentary series “United Gangs of America” for her coverage of the Bandidos.

Her debut novel, “Something’s Wrong With the Girls,” will be published by Rare Bird.

Read her work; follow her @oliviamesser; or send her an email to oliviamesser (at) protonmail (dot) com.