Staff writers Miller, Rozen take awards for investigative, business-news stories The Dallas Observer has won two Texas Katie Awards for outstanding journalistic achievement in the Dallas Press Club’s annual statewide contest. Announced at a November 11 ceremony, the Observer awards came in the major-market newspapers competition, open to all Texas…
It’s a shame that Colin Powell decided not to run; I think he would have contributed a much-needed lowering of the rhetorical temperature on the Republican side. I accept Powell’s word that his decision came from looking into his own soul and finding that he did not have the passion…
Holly Keiser was sitting on the living-room sofa, watching the evening news, when the story broke: a Dallas public-school teacher had been suspended from her job, supposedly for telling her black fifth-graders to “Go back to Africa.” At first blush, Keiser couldn’t imagine the story was true. What schoolteacher in…
The News’ Paul Quinn problem In columns past, BeloWatch has sounded alarms about how the Belo Corporation–which has a strict conflict-of-interest policy for lowly reporters and editors–allows its top brass to ignore those same rules. Belo CEO Robert Decherd, for example, personally made two contributions to the 1994 U.S. Senate…
Williams: Laura Miller maligns Laura Miller’s latest emotional tirade [“Kress and the merry morons,” November 9] is not only an extremely poor example of fair, objective journalism, it could be considered libelous. In every other of Miller’s advocacy pieces that I’ve read, she has at least allowed the targets of…
A poetic public place The story on the Prince of Peace Catholic Community’s experience in building their church and school [“From Bauhaus to God’s house,” October 26] is a very telling piece, for the following reasons: in one simple parable, the crisis of American culture and environment is made clear…
Darrell Frank appears at the door of his apartment wearing a black baseball cap with a Dead Serious logo–a guitar and bleached cow’s skull. His long, frizzy ponytail is pulled through the back. He ushers his guest past the living room’s big-screen TV, past his wife’s vast collection of stuffed…
Just call him Al With three distinctly different mug shots topping his column in just a week, it looked as if an identity crisis had befallen gushing Dallas Morning News gossip writer Alan Peppard. (To stay on Al’s good side, pronounce his name like “peppered,” not like that other puffy,…
Holy cow! What a vote that was in Canada. Speaking as one who is terribly fond of our neighbors, both north and south, I must confess that for me Canada has the additional charm of being the perfect polar opposite of Texas. In addition to affection, respect, concern, and goodwill,…
All the racial stuff happened while I was on maternity leave. And I don’t know what disturbed me more–the acquittal of O.J. Simpson or the trashing of Sandy Kress. I was squeezing a tomato in a Tom Thumb when the O.J. verdict came in. I’d run in to get something…
News gives brief play to ex-staffer’s kiddie-porn case In a 20-minute court appearance, with a soft voice, former Morning News assistant sports editor George Woods last Thursday formally entered his guilty plea to the felony charge of possessing kiddie-porn videotapes. The official action stirred Dallas’ paper of record to acknowledge–months…
Fired editor agrees to guilty plea in kiddie-porn case; News remains mum George Rodney Woods, a Dallas Morning News sports editor who became the center of an interstate kiddie-porn sting, has agreed to plead guilty to possession of child pornography. But Dallas’ Only Daily has continued to pretend the embarrassing…
Retching on Redbeard I feel dirty. I can’t seem to wash the filth off of my ashamed flesh. After reading some of the picks in your Best of Dallas issue [September 28], I was overcome with the urge to shower and forget what I had just seen. In particular, I…
One of my problems with Big Bidness is that those folks don’t have the sense God gave gravel. What a bunch of cashews. Here we are, going through this massive, enormous, Gingrich-powered transfer of wealth from the Have-Nots to the Haves, and what does the latest mega-merger media conglomerate do?…
On July 20, 1994, former Dallas resident Roosevelt Lampkin learned the city had bulldozed his rental house at 2330 Britton Street in Oak Cliff. The news came as quite a shock to Lampkin, who had retired in Milton, Florida. He had been in constant contact with city officials ever since…
Virtually every day, a guy named Joe Bob Burkleo climbs onto a DART bus, rides into neighborhoods he doesn’t live in, and pokes around in vacant houses and shabby properties that belong to people he doesn’t know. After cruising Dallas’ residential streets most of the day, he’ll end his journey…
The church ladies fell in love with the old church house the minute they laid eyes on it. The Lord had blessed them yet again, this time with a home on South Dallas’ Dryden Avenue for their fledgling ministry, which they intended to call Church of the Living God Youth…
Politics, doggy style It appears City Hall’s Doggygate is alive and kicking. You’ll remember gadfly Frank Bodzin blasted the city for harassing a widower while trying to collect on a $7 bounced check from the man’s dead wife, who had written the check–when she was alive, of course–to register her…
Sahar Ayad cried when she first learned about the plight of Sam and Kathy Krasniqi, the Albanian Muslim couple from North Dallas who lost their children to the state amid child-abuse charges (“Tell Mama Why You Cry,” Observer, Nov. 17, 1994). Sam was ultimately acquitted of those charges, but the…
In the midst of Oak Cliff’s Bishop Arts warehouse district, a stone’s throw from the Oak Cliff Coffee House, sits an unusual shop. It’s not the store’s collection of lovely antiques that makes it unique, or the relatively low cost of the well-maintained furniture crammed inside, although visitors constantly remark…
President Clinton made a good speech in Austin last week on this country’s worst problem. Clinton on race is always worth listening to; it’s his best thing, and he does it as well as anyone walking. For those who could see or switch between Clinton’s speech and the Million Man…
In remembrance Thank you, Peter Elkind, for the story on Brian Keith Thomas [“The forgotten man,” October 12]. I grew up in Richardson, graduating from Richardson High School. My husband is a former RISD English teacher. I grew up respecting J.J. Pearce. I still respect him, but… Ever since hearing…
