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The nexis of nothing and not much of nothing (That’s what she said)

wow. As in, underwhelmed-type “wow.”

Who would have thought our little corner of the state of Texas would be, sort of, the center of the media universe. At least, it was for a little while yesterday. That proved true as well in the completely ridiculous story of a New York congressman sex-texting his Newt, a sordid tale named appropriately by some in the media for such a political scandal — “Weinergate.”

“Oh I wish I weren’t a Congressman Anthony Weiner, that is what I truly wouldn’t be-e-e,
cause if I were a Congressman Anthony Weiner everyone would say WTF? to me. Another verse, with more gusto …”

Or something like that.

I have lost faith, interest, whatever you lose with a newspaper, with my hometown newspaper, “The Beaumont Enterprise.” The Hearst Newspaper product has a storied history, or a history of stories, at least. It still has a couple of good writers. But I think the Internet has turned the paper into something much less than it was and considerably less than what it could be, sorry but I couldn’t end with a preposition.

Call it psychic misfire or where one story ends and the other begins, I did buy today’s Enterprise in a store. Buying one these days is indeed a rarity even though it is a time this former reporter should be supporting newspapers. The Internet has ruined the Enterprise in more ways than one. I will not go deeply but anyone with a knowledge of newspaper newsrooms these days could easily figure out what is wrong with the my local paper.

Still, “Mass grave hysteria,” today’s below-the-fold story kind of sums up what is wrong with news today. That is even though the headline refers to the story about a psychic who managed to get scores of cops and media types, complete with their sat trucks and helicopters, out into the Big Thicket yesterday.

A lot of weird stuff happens in “The Thicket,” which refers both to a region which is both a botanical crossroads of the contiguous United States and a federal preserve under the control of the National Park Service. There, is this little lane through the woods known as “Bragg Road” which has drawn teens and curiosity seekers for decades to see the mysterious lights that seem to look different to each who catches a glimpse. Some say it is swamp gas. Others say it the spirit of a railroad man who worked on nearby rails. Depending on who tells the story, the railroader lost his hand while hitching together some rail cars and the ghost now walks around carrying his railroad lantern looking for that missing glove-holder.

So the story that sort of did, sort of didn’t, happen yesterday is not a real classic Big Thicket story though one day, with much telling and mis-telling, it may so become.

What happened is Liberty County authorities, where this psychic non-drama took place, got a call from a woman claiming to be a psychic. She reportedly was from the Texas Panhandle but was calling from a Austin-area telephone. That sounds kind of like the wonderful introduction the classic live version of the Waylon Jennings tune, “Bob Wills Is Still the King:”

“Here is a song I wrote on a plane between Dallas and Austin. Going to El Paso.”

That sounded kind of freaky back in the 70s, but not today to anyone who flies American Airlines in Texas.

The psychic conjured up a horrible scenario of chopped up kiddies with plenty of blood and gore told with just enough of the right details to make local authorities take notice.

As is the case when anything more than a 10-96 goes down in these parts, all the area authorities like to join in, those such as the Texas Rangers, the FBI, Gator 911, the Hardin-Jefferson Screaming Hawks High School Band, the Coast Guard, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the formidable Beaumont ISD Police Department.

And great googly moogly, when you’ve got that many cops in one place, you know who is going to show up don’t you? That’s right. The Dunkin’ Donut Mobile Rescue Corps.  No, the news media. This event/non event taking place right in the epicenter of a couple of small news markets such as Huntsville, Lufkin and Beaumont, and a large one, namely Houston, plus the national guys such as CNN out of Dallas, brings in mucho media.

Search did the police. They found some rotting meat in a malfunctioning freezer. On a really, really hot Texas day. Jeez, those police deserve a bonus for that. They also found some blood which the owner, reportedly a long-haul trucker who was on the road and was quite surprised to hear a national “happenin'” was going down at his place, said came from a botched suicide attempt. The botchee, was allegedly the landlord’s daughter’s ex boyfriend who was stationed at Fort Hood. Although I do not encourage suicide, I can see why the soldier tried, since he was stationed at Fort Hood.

But the cops found no chopped up bodies of kids or anything else.

Meanwhile, “Naughty politician sexted LU student,” the Enterprise head read, “LU” referring to local Lamar University. Yes, a local 26-year-old was getting nastygrams from Anthony Weiner. The young lady went on Sean Hannity’s show and reportedly — I don’t watch Hannity — gave a very grown-up account of the … whatever it is. ABC reportedly paid a very grown-up amount between $10,000 and $15,000 for an interview with our local 15 minutes of fame celeb Meagan Broussard. I sound snarky, but I could do a lot with $15,000, so I will be less than judgmental.

I close this media-rich episode with a message that just came up at the bottom of my blog saying: “You do not have permission to do that.”

Everywhere you have a critic.

 

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Breaking: A hoax we can only hope

We interrupt this blog for breaking news.

Local and national reports indicate authorities in Liberty County, Texas, are awaiting a search warrant before exploring a possible mass grave, which a tipster says, may contain more than two dozen dismembered bodies. Local station KBMT indicates the bodies may include children.

The area being looked at is about 45 miles away from where I live.

Hopefully, this will be much, much less a story than reported.

 

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Osama dies, it rains

It was difficult to determine this afternoon whether people plodding down the streets of Beaumont — umbrellas partially covering them from rain — had a special step in their walk because of the much-needed rain, or because Osama bin Laden was killed.

Why try to add anything about the death of “America’s Public Enemy No. 1 Since 9/11?” There are plenty of questions remaining and one of the biggest is how much will the military allow to be told about what was, in essence “a daring early morning raid into Pakistan by Navy Seals?” This piece from The Christian Science Monitor answers some basic questions about the raid by Seal Team 6. There are so many more questions though. What did bin Laden look? Like crap on a shingle? Was he nearly crippled and still sporting that long-ass beard? Was he the one that reports said took a woman as a human shield? I wouldn’t put it past him.

Other questions linger as well. Could the capture have been made without killing bin Laden? That will be probably a big question tossed around by reporters and policy wonks. Was this in fact a mission to take bin Laden “dead or alive” as our former President G.W. Bush declared? If it was a military assassination, was it covered by executive order that takes in black and white a precedence over previously-enacted laws that forbids such actions?

I am not saying the actions were wrong, quite the contrary. If some SOB had it coming, it was OBL or UBL or whatever spelling you want to use for the now departed murderer. That’s what the terrorist acts were. Maybe those were acts of war. Somewhere deep down in me though, feels as if  such distinctions made for these goofballs as some kind of super-combatants build these people up much more than they deserve. I laud the raid and its execution, no pun intended. I just believe it unfortunate that is to what our nation had to resort.

And I said I couldn’t add anything to the OBL death. I lie.

I was working in my office up there on the 3rd floor and apparently I had been looking out on and off at the rain, but it all hit me at once like a ton of feathers. Well, that’s kind of exaggerating don’t you think? Or don’t you? Nonetheless, we have needed a good “soaker.”

Our area of Southeast Texas is under what the National Weather Service terms a “Severe to Exceptional Drought.” There is a rainfall deficit that generally runs about 11 inches or so since Jan. 1. It’s Moe or Larry in other places around the area. We had a nice little rain where I live.

Hopefully, we will work this drought out pretty soon and won’t have to make it up in some tropical storm or hurricane. The latter is what we will have to watch for not too long from now. Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain, those who predict hurricanes. We either will have one or more, or we won’t. If you live where I live, you must go with the assumption that a hurricane is coming to get you and your place this summer or early fall. You should plan for what you should do. Do it now, not later. There is no need to do  it all at once but try and get your supplies bought up and your evacuation plan (or not) worked out before the last minute.  I should practice what I preach, I know. But if I stay behind, and hopefully stay safe, it will be to freelance some rewarding pieces. It isn’t all about money. As in the past, I wanted a wider audience to know about what our folks were experiencing. This is especially true after the wind and rains and Anderson Cooper left.

I am still hoping for some good rains before the heart of hurricane season rolls around. But the end of droughts are guided by the same principle of the karmic episode in which Osama bin Laden found himself yesterday: “What goes around, comes around.”

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Funny? Maybe. Journalism. Doubtful.

My friend Marcy sent me a story which came from my town’s local daily but was apparently rewritten by the Associated Press.

“A holdup?

Hilarious.

Police say a Southeast Texas bank teller thwarted an attempted robbery when she read the holdup note and started laughing.”

The story which first appeared in the Beaumont Enterprise was basically a rewritten news release from the Beaumont Police Department.

I replied to my friend, the contents of that reply will be a bit less graphic here, that it might have been really funny had the newspaper obtained a copy of the note from the police. “Let us in on the joke,” I wrote.

Now, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo — whose bank it was which was robbed — said the teller did not laugh and the newspaper story said the video proved it. Of course, the story said it was the Wells Fargo spokeswoman who said surveillance video proved the teller didn’t laugh because the company takes such matters “seriously.” CYA? Maybe. Did the cops who wrote the report or provided the information for the press release, which the Enterprise’s story copied, get it wrong? I would doubt it.

So what’s going on here?  An odd story about a bank robbery that lacked, as far as I can tell, any original reporting? A story the corporate flacks spiked because they are worried about getting sued? Sadly, the folks here in Beaumont will probably never know unless the same would-be robber is arrested and tells all during a confession in a city in which the media actually reports news  rather than acts as a stenographer.

For the longest time I defended our local paper, but I can no longer do that. The Enterprise, a Hearst newspaper, has fallen to its lowest point that I can remember and I have been reading the paper for the majority of my reading life. More and more it seems as if the editors are content with stories which are sent out via an e-mail alert from the  police and fire department. I know about the content of the stories as opposed to that of the press releases because I also receive the same e-mail alert and read the same releases.

At least from the time I worked as a reporter until recently, the Beaumont Police Department would not have won any “sunshine in open government” awards. I will give it to the Enterprise that they have fought the law and the law didn’t win when it came to open records in a few cases. But in reality, using open records laws to gain information is like shooting fish in a barrel. The Beaumont police have had some embarrassing events lately although the public would have hardly known about it were it not for lawsuits in which the information freely flows.

I am not saying that the Enterprise does not have good journalists. I know of a few who are both good reporters and writers. I might know more were they either allowed to report or made to do so.

Good reporters can get information, the real skinny, if they have one iota of  talent. That is no matter how stingy a police department is with its newsworthy intel. I have worked in places where one would have thought the police owned and had copyrights on information. Even more though, I worked where cops and prosecutors told me everything. That’s not always good either, but I was hooked.

I have a few other beefs with my local newspaper. One is that I can’t stand the stupid, race-baiting blog on their Web site. I will not give it any notice by mentioning its name on my blog although I am ashamed to see that once again the writer of that poor excuse for journalism won first place in the state’s Associated Press Managing Editors Assn. awards. Then again, I’ve won a couple of first place awards from that same organization. Newspaper awards mean more to newspaper publishers and editors and reporters’ egos than anything of substance.

The other beef and it is a major one is that I bought a newspaper one day last week for the first time in a year or so and I was disturbed to find stuffed inside was the Southeast Texas Record. The Record is a weekly newspaper that reports from all the local courts in the area and in the federal Eastern District of Texas. When I say report, I mostly mean its reporters draw information from court records.  The only problem I have is that the Record is one of several papers in the country published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Why would the U.S. Chamber of Commerce publish a paper in Beaumont, Texas, you might ask? That is because this area has garnered a reputation — rightfully or wrongly — of being a “judicial hellhole” or a place in which juries and sometimes judges are plaintiff-friendly.

I do not have the time nor patience to debate the whole “frivolous lawsuit” issue. In fact, the U.S. Chamber’s part in trying to deny an American citizen’s right to a civil trial as specified under the 7th Amendment is only one area in which that behemoth of American commerce is a threat to the average citizen. The chamber is also exceedingly anti-union and pro-Republican. If you want to do some research into donors to the Republican party, you just might find a great deal of those dollars coming from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Obviously, I have a bunch of pent-up anger toward my local newspaper. There are various reasons why. But I would much rather someone at the top start kicking some ass and taking names to make the Enterprise a real newspaper once more than to read press releases I can get at my own fingertips.

The Enterprise has pointed out that it just stuffs the Record inside and it has no “marriage of convenience.” Nevertheless, the BE has long been an editorially-conservative newspaper and its stuffing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce inside it just too much for a moderately liberal union guy to bear.

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Knock, knock. Who’s there? Dave. Dave? Yeah, Dave. Dave’s not here.

One tired midnight about seven years ago I got a taxi to take me from the crappy Arlington, Va., hotel in which I was staying to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The airport, known by its identifier one sees on baggage tags as “DCA,” obviously is a mouthful so I suppose people calls the airport basically whatever they want just as they would do anyway. I call it “Washington National,” because that’s what it was called before people figured it should be named for the man who broke the air traffic control union, PATCO.

Now I had never really hung around airports at 1, 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, but National was pretty doggone quiet until around quarter to 6 a.m. when the airport came to life including the arrival of the TSA inspectors. I never figured out why the airlines and airports and TSA said you should arrive a couple of hours before your flight for screening because the inspectors at National got to the job at 6:45 and had all their X-rays ready for the first boarding at around 6:30.

With that said, I never heard a thing fly into National from  the time I got there around 1 a.m. until sometime after 6 a.m. So it wouldn’t surprise me that the control tower at National might not be fully staffed between midnight and 6 a.m. But to hear as I did in several stories today that only one controller was working during the wee hours Wednesday, and that controller might have been asleep just kind of gave me a chill. Check out this audio courtesy of The Washington Post.

By now the story has been well released that several flights just after midnight Wednesday ended up having its pilots to self-guide their jets into National, with the help of a controller who directs the flight paths across that area and is not part of the National or even the Washington airport system. That system includes both National and Dulles airports.

The incident is, obviously, being investigated by every initialed agency that has anything to do with flight control but there is speculation that the controller might have fallen asleep.

Now I admit to being drowsy on the job sometimes. I was drowsy before leaving work this afternoon. I had finished my major tasks and was waiting on signs my crappy work computer was indeed a computing device when a wave of sleepiness hit me. No other humans nor was really anything around to really stimulate me, I will have to say in my defense. But even had I fallen asleep, and likely only I would have known, I would not have had the potential to kill a couple of hundred human beings!

I imagine that controller will face stiff discipline, but as potentially dangerous as that was, the controller is suspended for the time being so as difficult as it might be let’s just chill until the incident has been thoroughly investigated before we decide to hang the guy. The FAA, or the people in charge of the agency locally by having only one person in the tower may also have been trying to cut corners  as different offices of  federal agencies are  wont to do, especially in this age where everyone is paranoid over spending anything. Then again, the controller may have had some medical reason he dozed off. There are many reasons to look at before we start the normal condemnation of this person, who may have fallen asleep.

Thus, let us just see where this leads us. In the meantime, I think I will take a nap.