Today's weather
Measured civility, chance of scattered drivel
Thursday
Mostly fluffy, chance of
pandering
NEWS
That was close
Unabomber captured northwest of Arlington
The eyes of babes
Arlington youths draw the Unabomber
SPORTS
Hey Ross, over here
To entice Mavericks, Arlington must bend over further than Ron Kirk
OPINIONS
Vatican III: why not in Arlington?
Jacobson: Landing a papal summit would help Arlington attract Nordstrom
Editorial: All other department stores, and faiths, are also welcome
BUSINESS
Mouseketears
Feds raid Disney sweat shop in Arlington
FLASHBACK
Dead body
Just 7 1/2 years ago, a 41-year-old woman was found dead by the side of Jacksboro Highway. The case remains unsolved.
A. H. Belo here to rescue Arlington
By April M. Washington
Staff Writer of the Arlington Morning News
The Arlington Morning News, Arlington's own almost-daily newspaper, begins publication today, serving Arlington, the 56th largest city in the United States of America, five out of seven days a week.
"For years, citizens of our city have waited restively for news of the outside world to reach us," says Arlington Mayor Richard Greene. "Did Dewey defeat Truman? Was nuclear power too cheap to meter? Did God make little green apples? Finally, the answers are at hand, Wednesdays through Sundays."
Arlington's new hometown newspaper belongs to Dallas-based A.H. Belo Corporation, and is a stepchild of The Dallas Morning News. The new paper will be printed in Plano. Arlington Morning News Editor and Publisher Gary Jacobson plans to move to Arlington when he can find a suitable house.
"For advertisers in a city as large and prosperous as Arlington to not have their own newspaper is a mockery of all that A.H. Belo believes in," says Burl Osborne, president of Belo's publishing division. "No single aggregation of car dealerships, shopping malls, and clothing stores in the nation has been as underserved as Arlington."
Because Arlingtonians may not be accustomed to prolonged bouts of reading, the new Arlington Morning News will initially publish just five days a week, Osborne says. Eventually Arlington, like Dallas, may be ready for a paper every day. "We don't want to make their heads hurt," he says.
Despite its Dallas ties, the Arlington Morning News is an independent operation, with its own typewriters and local telephone numbers--and a fervent commitment to cover Arlington.
"The philosophy is, we're covering Arlington," says Jacobson, the bearded, often retiring overseer of the new zone operation. "Covering the hell out of it. Every damn thing that moves. Arlington. Big A, little r, little l...C'mon, all together."
Initially, the Arlington Morning News will face minor competition from the flagging Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which still distributes some papers in the area, Jacobson says. But Belo hopes to make short work of what some are calling a "newspaper war."
"Wars? We know of wars, and of mice and men," says Osborne. "We'll do to Arlington what we did to Dallas. But until then, our advertising and subscription rates will be very competitive."
In new-car showrooms and at miniature-golf courses across Arlington, the arrival of the Arlington Morning News was hailed by business and community leaders. "It's always been the big question: If news ever happens in Arlington, will anyone read it?" asked one local business leader. "Now we'll find out."
From now on, Jacobson says, Arlingtonians can expect thorough, exhausting, and unrelentingly local coverage. "If the pope farts, we'll find an Arlington angle," he says. "War in Bosnia? What's it mean down at the Whataburger? You know what I mean?"
Please see Self-Indulgence on Page 2A
Zowie!
Astronomers have stumbled across new evidence suggesting that Arlington--and the rest of the solar system--was formed after a cataclysmic explosion often called the Big Bang. For more information on Arlington's
cosmic origins, please
see page 2A.
READER'S GUIDE FOR YOUR BRAND-NEW ARLINGTON MORNING NEWS Welcome to the Arlington Morning News. Your new newspaper will be nothing if not user-friendly. Arlington has a special charm, and we pledge to do our best chronicling the lives of our new neighbors and friends. To make it easier for our readers, we've prepared this helpful guide, which you might want to clip and save. (Take care with those scissors!)
GETTING ALONG: If you are a public official, advertiser, or well-connected citizen, and one of our reporters is bothering you about an arrest, tax-fraud scheme, embarrassing photograph, or sitting grand jury, we'd like to know. Please call 666-VETO.
If you are an advertiser who wishes to place a story in the paper or have an unflattering story killed, please call 666-GARY.
If you are an elected official seeking our support in a contested race, or a businessman seeking public financing for a private development project, please call 1-800-KIS-BURL.
SPORTS SCORES: Area coaches and parents are encouraged to call in scores and details from all events, including baseball, kick the can, soccer, air hockey, basketball, and goat roping. Please call 666-GAME.
DAILY CALENDAR: We want all of our readers to share in the vibrant life of our city. To list keggers, GOP teas, tractor pulls, garden-club covens, 12-step meetings, or spitting contests planned in your neighborhood, please call 666-RUBE.
ELVIS SIGHTINGS: Sightings will be published ONLY if reported independently by at least two witnesses not related by blood or marriage. Individuals may report no more than one sighting per month. Please provide as complete a description of clothing, hair style, and demeanor as possible. Call 666-LISA.
WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENTS: Will be published if the couple lives in Arlington, held their first tryst at an Arlington motel, or if one spouse shops at Nordstrom. Photographs will not be accepted from pregnant brides, but marrying cousins are OK. For assistance, please call 666-TIED.
BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENTS: Will be published if the parents live in Arlington, if the child is born in traffic at The Ballpark, or if the child was conceived on the floor of an Arlington bar. To place a birth announcement, please call 666-OOPS.
POLICE BLOTTER: Crime is a downer, and we sure don't condone it. But to find out if your mother, boss, or loan officer has been arrested, look way in the back of the paper for the stuff in small type. If you suspect your neighbor might be running a meth lab or telephone boiler room in his garage, please call 666-FINK.
RELIGION: Local congregations are welcome to list snake handlings, potluck suppers, immersions, spiritual events, mass suicides, seminars, ritual sacrifices, and bingo evenings. To list your church's event, please call 666-GAWD. To report unwanted sexual advances from a minister, priest, or deacon, please call 666-FEEL.
OBITUARIES: We will gladly publish obituaries of local residents and any Fort
Worth Star-Telegram subscriber who dies anywhere in the world. To place an obituary, please call 666-STIF.
MICKEY WATCH: A weekly business feature will track the slow death and impending sale of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. If you have tips on FWST editors disrobing in public, or staffers engaging in felonious, ridiculous, or just plain obnoxious behavior, please call 666-RICH. 6\04250245.NVT
Local woman dies, she was 'well-liked'
By Christopher Ave
Staff Writer of the Arlington Morning News
Agnes Smith often told neighbors there was no place in the world she would rather live than Arlington.
Now, Mrs. Smith is dead.
The lifelong Arlington resident was killed Tuesday while tending her garden. Police say a red Range Rover belonging to a local youth center jumped the curb in a residential neighborhood and struck Mrs. Smith in her geranium bed. She was 72 years old.
The driver of the vehicle, which was carrying several youths to clogging class, was questioned by police. He has not been charged. None of the youths was injured. Police also want to interview members of a Chem-Lawn crew believed to have been working nearby at the time of the accident.
Hours after the accident, shredded geraniums and small clogging shoes still littered the front yard of Mrs. Smith's tidy Arlington home. Friends and neighbors gathered on the sidewalk, stunned by the accident. "She was well-liked," says one neighbor.
Mrs. Smith, the daughter of two parents, was born in Arlington when it was just a bleak way-stop between Dallas and Fort Worth. During Smith's lifetime, Arlington grew to become the 56th largest city in the United States of America, and Gateway to Grand Prairie.
Friends say Mrs. Smith was a former avid mountain climber who, in her youth, had scaled three of the world's five highest mountain peaks. After one climb, she lost several toes to frostbite, they say, perhaps explaining why she was unable to elude the Range Rover as it careened toward her.
But for an Arlington girl, travel and mountain climbing could not replace the lure of the Texas prairie. In her later years, Mrs. Smith liked to attend Texas Rangers baseball games. She would often sit on her front porch and visit with neighbors, mostly complaining about traffic on South Cooper Street.
Many days, she would lace on a pair of her old trail boots and mall-walk at The Parks at Arlington.
"She was well-hiked," one friend says.
Neighbors said Mrs. Smith often told them she would never allow a Forth Worth-owned newspaper in her house, and vowed to shoot anyone who tried to deliver one to her. "I believe she meant it, too," one neighbor said.
Internationally, Mrs. Smith was perhaps best known as the winsome, provocative blonde whose sensational intimate relationship with former President
Please see Mrs. Smith on Page 2A
** On the western flank of Dallas, a great newspaper war rages. Troops
dispatched by the rapacious Dallas Morning News have invaded Arlington, bent on conquest of lucrative advertising territory long held by the vulnerable Fort Worth Star-Telegram.Three weeks have passed since the first shots were fired, and the Dallas Observer thought outsiders might like a taste of the battle. Staff Writer David Pasztor parodies the journalistic offerings now available in Arlington.
A warning to slower readers and Arlingtonians: This is a joke.
