Ask anyone in town for the name of the premier political consultant in Dallas and you'll get two names: Carol Reed and Rob Allyn. Since their offices are on separate floors of the same building on McKinney Avenue, and since they often find themselves in competition, you might assume that there's a war going on in the stairwell. Your assumption would prove false, at least most of the time.

We've all heard much about political consultants, but what do they actually do? "I consider myself a general contractor," Reed says. "I help design the blueprint and then take that blueprint and make sure that everything gets done on time and according to plan. I set the budget, hire the subcontractors and then make sure that they do their jobs well and according to budget.

"I may be the one who makes the trains run on time, but Rob's great gift is his ability to translate a plan into a message and then deliver that message in the most effective and motivating way."

The two may be competitors, but they often hire each other for big projects, and while their relationship stops well short of that of James Carville and Mary Matalin, there appears to be a genuine friendship behind the scheming, bare-knuckle intensity that attends big-time politics. There's also mutual respect, collegiality and, at times, just the faintest whiff of Oedipal drama between the one-time mentor and her former protégé.

"In politics, truth is always one of the alternatives," Allyn deadpans. "And one of the things that I admire most about Carol is that she tells the truth to her clients." Here's what Reed has to say about Allyn: "As gifted and creative a writer as Rob may be, his biggest strength is his focus, his ability to stay on message for his clients."

Most of these clients are Republicans, and the same can be said of most of Reed's clients as well. Two notable exceptions: Reed handled Democrat Ron Kirk's mayoral campaigns as well as his run for the U.S. Senate, while Allyn helped Laura Miller become and remain mayor, defeating Reed's client Tom Dunning in the race to complete Kirk's term. Allyn also helped the mayor best Mary Poss (not Reed's client) in the election for a full term in the nominally non-partisan office. Aside from these walks on the political wild side, the two consultants have, between them over the last 20 years, worked for virtually every major Republican office holder in the state, as well as the two Presidents Bush and President Reagan.

Reed and Allyn are now working together to help pass the bond issue that would move the Dallas Cowboys to Arlington, a campaign spearheaded by Allyn. "I fought as long and as hard as I could to bring the Cowboys to the Cotton Bowl," says Reed, a former president of Friends of Fair Park. "After we lost that fight, I decided that I might as well take the money." Both predictably but probably accurately express optimism that the bond issue will pass.

The Dallas Cowboys campaign is emblematic of the consultants' involvement with lucrative clients and causes that are political but only quasi-governmental in nature: bond issues. The two have worked together successfully on referendum campaigns for the American Airlines Center and DART. Reed's solo victories include the Trinity River project, the 2002 DISD bond campaign and many bond campaigns for Dallas County, while Allyn's résumé boasts of successful campaigns on behalf of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts and the Houston Metro.

One distinction between the two is that while Reed does business in other cities, her heart seems to be in Dallas, while Allyn casts a broader net, with offices in Austin, Phoenix and Mexico City. Allyn's international clients have included Mexican President Vicente Fox and Prime Minister Perry Christie of the Bahamas, as well as political parties and causes in Asia and the Middle East. Reed, on the other hand, has been extremely active in Dallas civic affairs, serving, among many other offices, as chair of the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau, president of the Dallas Rotary Club and on more than two dozen civic and charitable boards.

"A genuine difference between us is that while I certainly do work outside of Dallas, my community involvement keeps me focused here, while Rob actively seeks more national and international projects," Reed says.

Allyn, who sold his company in 2002 to Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations firm with offices in more than 100 countries, agrees. "We've always treated politics like a business," he says. "By definition, this approach also works for corporate clients. Our new affiliation gives us leverage and support to pursue business all over the world."

Meanwhile and for both, as long as there are elections, they plan to plan them.

"Corporate clients offer a challenge and pay the bills, but once politics is in your blood it remains your passion," Reed says. "You can go to rehab, but you're hooked forever."

Burns is everything we want in a biz-columnist: concise, easy to understand, helpful to the average Joe and Jane living paycheck to paycheck as well as the CEO. Burns doesnt care about trying to make you comprehend how the GNP affects the Whatzis Dow and Whozis Index of Parameters; he just wants to tell you the best way to save your money. As journalists, we need all the help we can get, and we suspect you do, too.

A little folksy, occasionally philosophical and always entertaining, Caussey is one of Dallas journalism's best-kept secrets. Schoolteacher by day, his column appears weekly and earned him an invitation to the annual Dallas Press Club Katie Awards banquet a couple of years back. Now he's even syndicated in several other small Texas papers. His column alone is worth a subscription.

There is a formula to writing for publications, and each one is unique. If you want to write for D Magazine, sound breezy and scolding at the same time. ("North Dallas' courage is apparent in the winning smiles of Highland Village shoppers whose Saturday-afternoon purchases prove wrong the liberal naysayers on the City Council.") If you want to write for the Dallas Observer, learn the art of the dramatic one-sentence ender. ("James thought the good times would go on forever, his power and wealth and fame accruing year after year, until the heavens opened and he ascended to his rightful place as king of all he surveyed. [New paragraph.] He could not have been more wrong.") And if you want to write for The Dallas Morning News, learn how to combine a random lead anecdote with a forced transition in fewer than 25 words. This is most apparent in sports stories ("For luck, Dirk Nowitzki always wears three pairs of socks during games. Against the Chicago Bulls, three was indeed his lucky number."), but you can find it in any section ("Mayor Ron Kirk says he likes to swim. But yesterday, he recoiled after sticking his toe in political hot water."). Finding good writers, then, means finding the ones who buck the trend, who avoid clichés like the plague, who sound not like their publication but like themselves. Beatriz Terrazas, the photographer-turned-feature writer at the News, is perhaps the best writer the paper has ever employed. She writes in pictures, creating stark images that linger and affect. For proof, you need look no further than her story "The Voice of Memory," from June 11, 2000. It's still one of the most moving essays we've ever read in that newspaper. For a more recent example, last month's story on Esther and Leoncio Puentes and how they helped redefine their northwest Dallas neighborhood was wonderful, the sort of simple, touching tale the paper too often fails to bring to life. No such problem for Terrazas, though.

She just does good stuff, and she does it quietly and effectively. Lill was the reason the stupid Dallas City Council ultimately restored funding to the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Film Commission. She fought to protect the city's historic preservation law when some dude tried to gut the law so he could add a 400-square-foot closet to the front of his Swiss Avenue mansion. All over District 14, from East Dallas to the northwest corner of the city, her constituents regularly see Lill patrolling the streets to make sure the city is picking up the garbage. And because of that, the city picks up the garbage in her district! Amazing.

Remember when D Magazine pissed off mightily former Dallas Morning News columnist John Anders by reporting that he'd been fired instead of opting to take early retirement? Well, guess who wrote a lengthy piece on the wonders of a world beyond journalism in D's June 2001 issue? The magazine even let Anders take a roundhouse swing at the folks publishing the piece ("It would have been nice if someone had bothered to call..."). And then, at the end of the article, D offers an apology for getting John's Austin-based retirement off on the wrong foot ("D Magazine was obviously wrong..."). Nothing like a freelance paycheck to make folks act like they're best friends.

King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain came to town last March for the opening. So what's your excuse? For decades, one of the largest collections of Spanish art outside of Spain languished in little-known, unprepossessing quarters on the Southern Methodist University campus. The new museum is a tad boring on the outside--generic SMU brick-and-columns pompous--but it's grand, the interiors provide a stunning setting for a world-class collection...and lots of beautiful young guys and gals are strolling the campus. What's keeping you?

Award-winning journalist Bill Sloan, former Dallas Times Herald reporter and author of a shelf full of nonfiction books (and a couple of novels), seems to have hit the Big Time with his colorful and applauded reflection on the supermarket tabloid newspaper industry. The title, natch, comes straight off the cover of one of the publications he edited back in the late '60s. The book's gotten Sloan attention from everybody from Entertainment Tonight to C-SPAN's Book TV.

Impresario Kay Cattarulla's brilliant series at the Dallas Museum of Art puts famous writers on stage to talk to you about their work. The theater at the Dallas Museum of Art is just intimate enough that some of these productions turn into private confabs between the authors and the audience. It's a great chance to stick writers with all of those questions you carry around after reading a good book, like, "What in the world did you mean by...?" Tickets for the writers programs are $15-$17 a pop. The next season's lineup will be announced in January.

For a decade now, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has conducted a series of free outdoor concerts in the city's parks. The season traditionally gets under way with the annual Easter program in Lee Park--that one's been going on for 20 years--and doesn't wrap up until June after stops at Kiest Park, Campbell Green Park, Mountain View College and Flagpole Hill. Family picnics are welcome, so bring your own blanket or lawn chairs. Additionally, two free "festival concerts" are held each year at the Meyerson Symphony Center--one celebrating the contributions of Hispanic composers and another highlighting African-American conductors and composers.