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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Cyber-Clyde
To the editor: Letter writer Greg Shirey (Jan. 23, 2003) is somewhat correct about my web site (www.landslideclyde.com). It has languished some, and I no longer throw hand grenades at fellow council members, not that they don’t deserve them on occasion. One of the problems in maintaining the site has been having someone to post the material. When Chris Turner was my aide he constantly badgered me to write something and he quickly posted it. He wrote a few excellent articles himself.
When Chris left for greener pastures, Cindy Crain took over aide duties and posted anything I wrote and kept up the calendar, but she was more into constituent services and handled them well. Cindy left in October 2001 and is now running for city council.
Geoffrey Mitchell has assumed the administrative responsibilities for Team Clyde and is also constituent-oriented. His computer skills are not those of Turner or Crain — nor are mine. As a consequence of your “Static” piece (Jan. 2, 2003), Cindy is doing some work that will allow me to write to the site without the HTML stuff and hopefully it will be easier to update.
It is still a treasure of information and I thank Fort Worth Weekly and Greg Shirey both for logging on.
Clyde Picht
Council Member, District 6
Fort Worth
Tenacious Reporting
To the editor: First let me offer my congratulations on the exemplary job Dan Malone and the Fort Worth Weekly did in investigating and reporting on Fort Worth’s most heinous serial sexual predator case (“Stolen Souls,” Jan. 9, 2003). Dan Malone demonstrated journalistic integrity and personal tenacity to report a story that your daily rival was completely uninterested in investigating. In fact we approached the Fort Worth Star-Telegram more than two years ago with allegations of serial sexual molestations by Wirt Norris, and all we got from the editorial staff was a resounding “not interested.” The Star-Telegram should hang its head in shame over their egregious cowardice. The Weekly proved once again it is Fort Worth’s one and only source for the important news of the community.
I would like to refute the assertion by Mr. Cordova that the Boys and Girls Clubs investigated the allegations we made to him over two years ago. In fact he was openly hostile to me. Their attorney, while telling me of others who had contacted him over the years, was only interested in their liability exposure. If there was an investigation, then they did it without contacting a single victim. In fact, no apologies have been offered from Boys and Girls Clubs to any victim since the overwhelming evidence that you reported has been revealed. I wonder if Michie Brous still stands solidly behind Norris?
Your readers should know that we also brought this information to District Attorney Tim Curry over two and a half years ago. In a letter to me the D.A. stated there would be no investigation. In fact they never considered opening an investigation and had never talked to a single victim or material witness till this past November. Fort Worth will have to decide for itself if the D.A.’s office is inept or if there is something more sinister at work. Norris has many long ties to law enforcement and party politics including Tim Curry’s campaign. Curry has demonstrated a total lack of professionalism on other occasions, so I do not know if this is a reflection of Curry’s incompetence and disinterest or other factors. It bears investigation.
Law enforcement was well aware of the rumors about Norris, as was anyone who lived in Rivercrest or Westover Hills. It would be hard for Mr. Curry, longest-standing D.A. in Tarrant County and in Texas, to be unaware of these rumors. Yet Norris remained unimpeded all these years in Mr. Curry’s jurisdiction. I ask the same question many others do: Why is Norris still a free man?
Tim Kaastad
Fort Worth
The Apathy Gazette
To the editor: When the Arlington Morning News was scaled back from a daily paper to a truncated bureau section in 2001, circulation for both the AMN and the Dallas Morning News was higher than it was in 1996. So, to say the AMN never grew or made an impact (“Marching in a Different Direction,” Jan. 23, 2003) is false. The folks in downtown Dallas or Fort Worth may not have ever thought it was war, but for those of us in Arlington it was, and it was one we at the AMN won more days than we lost.
I served variously as sports editor, business editor, and night city editor at the AMN. Our sports section helped changed the way both the DMN and the S-T cover high school sports. When we started, the DMN employed a handful of reporters to cover area high schools; now there’s an army fast approaching 40 when you count suburban editors.
As for the news product, do you think Lawrence Young (may God and Allah rest his soul) would have earned his post as the managing editor at the Riverside [Calif.] Press-Enterprise had he not first led the AMN in putting out a quality product? News and business reporters broke stories and made Arlington city officials dream of days when only the S-T cared about what they were doing.
The journalists involved on both sides of the Arlington newspaper war gave it everything they had every day. But when you’re dealing with a population that is in large part apathetic about where it lives, no amount of news coverage is going to win them over. That, I believe, is why Arlington remains the largest city in America without its own daily newspaper or public transportation. In the end, Arlington gets what it asks for — to remain a commuter community lost in suburbia.
Douglas Pils
Little Rock, AR
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