Dallas Blog

Courtesy Margaret A. Purse/KERA

A Trinity River Navigation Company stock certificate from 1892

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, KERA's working on an enormo Trinity River project with pieces for radio, TV and Internets. Today, we got a sneak peek at a major slice of the pie, which includes everything from an interactive timeline to video testimony, as KERA's Meg Fullwood forwards along the link to Living with the Trinity: A River's Story (also the name of Schutze's in-the-works autobiography, ghostwritten by Rod Dreher). The radio component begins airing tomorrow during Morning Edition and runs through week's end; the morning story will re-air later in the day during All Things Considered, then come available on the KERA Web site.

Shelley Kofler gets things started on Tuesday with a piece titled "Where Do We Get Our Water?," which will deal with "the vast system of reservoirs and treatment facilities that provide water for North Texans." On Wednesday, Kofler "explores how much water we need, looks into the reservoir system built after the 1950s drought and planning for future needs." That'll be followed by B.J. Austin's Thursday story about water consumption in Dallas. On Friday, Bill Zeeble closes out the series -- for now -- with a story about water availability issues in the middle of a long-term drought.

Meg says that new content will pop up on the site throughout the summer, including "an educational component and new video pieces," which will be followed in the fall by further radio stories and, finally, a KERA-TV documentary. All this is made possible, but of course, with a grant from the Meadows Foundation. And the letter "T."

City Auditor's Office

According to the latest audit, this is how much the city pays the county per a 31-year-old county jail operating agreement.

In 1978, the city of Dallas and Dallas County signed an agreement concerning the operations at the county jail -- an agreement that's been revised four times, most recently in 1997. Which, as far as City Auditor Craig Kinton is concerned in his latest audit, is far too long to go between revisions -- especially since "the County jail operation has experienced many changes" in the decade-plus since the last look-see. Kinton's report, given to council members Friday and sent to media this morning, says the failure to update the agreement has led to several problems, chief among them: how the county identifies and defines a "city prisoner" and how the county tallies jail operating costs, which Kinton guesstimates has led to the city's overpaying the county by more than $2.2 million between fiscal years 2006 and '08.

Kinton writes that the city's been paying the county based on "preliminary budget expenditures" and "projected prisoner numbers," rather than using "actual expenditures and actual prisoner count." Which means that even though the number of prisoners is on the decline -- 60,723 in 2008, as opposed to 85, 298 in 2006 -- the city's costs have increased. Kinton does write that the numbers may be off a little, give or take: He says the $2.2 million figure is based on "historical data of jail cost categories." Still.

Brandon Thibodeaux

John Wiley Price is threatening legal action over Schutze's inland port stories.

It was strange to pick up The Dallas Morning News today and learn that Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price has impugned the integrity of Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze. The commish accuses Schutze of reporting comments made by two public officials -- U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson and Dallas County Judge Jim Foster -- who, Price maintains, accused him of allegedly trying to "shake down" The Allen Group, a major developer of the inland port project in southern Dallas.

Buzz uses the word "allegedly" because Price has filed petitions to take the deposition of Johnson and Foster in anticipation of filing suit against the two, and possibly the Observer, for defaming him -- a suit that, jurisprudentially speaking, would be a giant crock.

We use the word "strange" because we at the Observer are used to being ignored by The News, which rarely credits us for stories we have broken, much less accurately reported. True to form, News reporters Kevin Krause and Gromer Jeffers ignored Schutze, claiming that he couldn't be reached for comment. In journalese that usually means they tried to reach him, which they didn't -- Schutze says he received no phone, e-mail or text messages at work, home or cell.

If they had bothered to reach him, he says, he would have played his tape of a phone conversation he recorded with Johnson and read them the notes of his conversation with Foster. Oh, well. Better late than never: We've included excerpts from those conversations after the jump.

Hate to follow any news story, especially one from a pub I used to work for, but sometimes it can't be helped. Especially when someone like brother reporter John Council looks toward the sky and notices it's falling on the Dallas County Republican Party. In this week's Texas Lawyer, Council reports that of the 12 Dallas County Republican trial judges whose terms are up in 2010, six are bench-bouncing to the Democrats, forsaking the party that brought them to the dance and leaving with someone else.

All are singing the same song: "It's the demography, stupid."

The political sin of flip-floppery is anything but uncommon among the state's elected judiciary. Dallas County Democratic judges jumped ship during the Reagan Revolution of the '80s and '90s, and now that the pendulum is swinging toward the Democrats again, Criminal District Judge John Creuzot, a Democrat turned Republican, has led the way in this election cycle by returning to the Democratic fold. Hence, the video above -- brought to you by the Dallas County Young Democrats two weeks ago.

Thanks to some dude named Anthony Noto at Goldman Sachs, newspaper stocks are tanking today. Seems Noto, who Forbes recently said was pretty good at picking stocks, said today that he "anticipates ad sales will weaken further as economic conditions continue to deteriorate in 2008," and Goldman Sachs today is hitting the virtual pavement to warn investors that newspaper stocks are a lousy investment for the foreseeable future.

Noto was particularly hard on The New York Times, but on the day Belo Corp. announced its partnership with Yahoo! News, to which Belo will provide local news video clips from 13 of its TV stations (including WFAA-Channel 8), its stock is drop, drop, dropping -- as of 2:35 p.m. today, by 38 cents to $15.09. --Robert Wilonsky

So tomorrow, if you're cruising the Internets looking for work, you might come across something that says, oh, I don't know, "Help wanted: Dallas Observer is looking for an editor." And it won't be a joke. I'm outta here.

And no, I wasn't fired. Heads didn't roll; blood didn't spill. It was all painfully painless. But today with much regret I told the Observer staff that I am stepping down as editor. I'm leaving sometime in January to write a book loosely based on the first story I ever wrote for the Observer -- way back in 1992, before we had an electronic archive -- titled "My Life as Holy Roller." (Great headline, Peter Elkind.) I'll make you a copy for 20 bucks.

I've worked for Village Voice Media -- and its predecessor, New Times -- for nearly 15 years, which is most of my career as a journalist. At the Observer I've worked with the most talented, courageous and hard-working group of journalists you'll ever find. I'm continually amazed by the great writers, reporters, editors and columnists we develop here. No wonder they're sought after by so many other publications. When I leave, I'm sure I'll write a long, meandering post about some of the strange and wonderful experiences I've had here over the years, but for now, that's all. I will continue writing for the Observer in some capacity. Bible Girl isn't ready to hang up her cape just yet. --Julie Lyons

Don't know how the rumors got started -- Seattle-based Fisher Communications-owned Pegasus News does, however -- but Fair to Midland's publicist just e-mailed Unfair Park and everyone else to let us and you know that the band ain't playing no stinkin' free show on Jul7 25 at the House of Blues. Says the release of the rumors:

This is not true and Fair to Midland will NOT be there and unfortunately, they were never supposed to be.

This free show is a CD release show for Evans Blue only (with whom the guys have just played a few shows with).

Please make sure to remove Fair to Midland from any calendar listing or show information you may have included them on.

Fair to Midland will be back to Dallas soon – they are just looking for the right opportunity to make up the show earlier this month with 69 Eyes that they had to cancel.

Guess we'll just have to make other plans now, wanh. --Robert Wilonsky

I've heard from several Friends of Unfair Park this morning complaining about our "new format," which is a grey screen with black type. Yeah, that sounds pretty unreadable. Trust me, it's not a new format. It's some kind of a glitch, and our people are on it, trying to find out why some folks are seeing this and others are not. (As in, Unfair Park looks fine on my screen, but not on Buzz's.) So, to repeat: It's not a new format, just a foul-up we're working to correct ASAP. Thanks and our apologies.

Update: Since our Web developers can't re-create the problem on their end, using several computers, all they can suggest is the obvious to those getting the grey screens: Clear your cache. Yeah, I know... --Robert Wilonsky

The fish tank is getting cloudy. Good thing I'm not a goldfish.

Last night I made dinner on a camp stove and smoked up the entire house. Everything smells like seared olive oil and teriyaki sauce. I got dressed in the dark this morning, which some people say I do anyway.

I've discovered that an 1,800-watt generator will power a hair dryer, barely, and DSL, but not both at the same time. Forget about your refrigerator. You need 5,000 watts for that, and then that's all it can do. I gave away the frozen turkey yesterday. Anyone care for a defrosted New Zealand leg of lamb?

We've been without power for 39 hours now, and TXU's automated phone line keeps telling us that electricity has been restored to our neighborhood. Our entire street in southwest Dallas, however, is dark.

Don't know about y'all, but my neighborhood, in southwest Dallas, looks like a hurricane plowed through. We haven't had power since about 7 p.m. last night, and large trees are in the streets, on cars, on houses and on sheds. Some very large trees were completely uprooted. When the storm hit, you could hear the dull crack of trees breaking every few minutes.

Our transformer blew up and started a tree on fire. One tree crushed our front gate and blocked our driveway. This morning you could hear the chorus of chain saws throughout the 'hood -- among those who were fortunate enough to have gas-powered saws. (Ever thought about the fact that an electric-powered saw is worthless when the power's out?)