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Patrick Williams

Patrick Williams is editor-in-chief of the Dallas Observer. Before joining the staff in July 1997, Patrick worked for the Southern Illinoisan, Amarillo Globe News and San Antonio Express-News. As editor-in-chief, he oversees the newsroom and guides the coverage of both the Dallas Observer’s printed publication and online website.

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Savage Breasts

Do the homeless hate classical music?

By Patrick Williams
Dec 25, 2003

This is the time of year when Buzz spends countless hours at Dallas' central library, doing research for our upcoming annual year-end story. (By "research" we mean "cadging from The Dallas Morning News microfilms." Please don't tell them.) It has become something of a holiday tradition for us, hanging out...
Secret Revealed

A sexually oriented business in DeSoto? Nah, really?

By Patrick Williams
Dec 4, 2003

Is a shop that sells condoms, lubricants, risqué novelties, lingerie and, um, "massagers" a sexually oriented business? Sara Lee Goff, owner of Condoms to Go, doesn't think so. The city of DeSoto begs to differ. Goff opened her seventh Dallas-area shop in DeSoto in September, though this time she called...
Night at the Opera

Buzz seeks out culture and finds a few Marias

By Patrick Williams
Nov 27, 2003

After having spent the better part of the past six years voicing opinions on politics, culture, the law and other things we know little about, Buzz feels it's time to expand our horizons and venture into new, fancier territory. So this week, Buzz tries our hand as opera critic. That's...
Poll Axed

Rate your teacher on your own time

By Patrick Williams
Nov 20, 2003

Listen up, people: If you want to continue to get a weekly dose of quality vicious Buzz product, you're all going to have to stop being so damn reasonable. We're talking to you, Mr. Jim Hirsch, associate superintendent for technology at Plano Independent School District. Buzz received a press release...
Staff Infection

The DMN cuts to the Quick

By Patrick Williams
Nov 13, 2003

Dallas Morning News publisher James Moroney III wants to know why the morale among his Metro reporters is low, sources at the News tell Buzz. Good question. What, oh what, could the answer be? Perhaps theyre less than happy that the papers covering more board meetings out in Lewisville, thanks...
Stop the Presses

It's déjà news at the DMN

By Eric Celeste and Patrick Williams
Oct 30, 2003

Stop the presses: "You might think the possibility of forged documents would have come up by now," The Dallas Morning News opined Saturday in an editorial about the Dallas police fake-drug scandal. The self-congratulatory editorial appeared the same day the daily ran a front-page story "revealing" that a lawyer for...
Vice is Nice

Checking in on the wages of sin

By Patrick Williams
Oct 23, 2003

When Buzz last checked in with the Dallas-based Vice Fund (VICEX) at its birth late last August, the mutual fund's managers were betting that investing in sin would pay off big. There are few certainties in life, the reasoning went. There are death and taxes, then there's the human hunger...
ICE, ICE Babies

SMU kids learn about life outside The Bubble

By Patrick Williams
Oct 16, 2003

If you want to hang at the ICE house, first you have to know the rules. It's easy; they're posted on the living-room wall, scrawled in felt-tip on a poster. There are six, first among them no cursing. Second, no violence. Third rule, show respect for...wait a second, let's go...
Help Wanted

Deborah Norville offers apology to fired security guard

By Patrick Williams and Eric Celeste
Oct 16, 2003

When we last left Richard Daniels, he had been removed as a security guard at the Dallas office of KTVT-Channel 11 (Buzz, October 9). He was let go after he had a run-in with Deborah Norville of Inside Edition, who was in town and had to tape her show in...
Huh?

It's Greek to us

By Patrick Williams
Oct 2, 2003

First, a disclaimer: Buzz doesn't speak Spanish. We tried to learn. Even got so far as to be able to hold a conversation, provided the person we were talking with: didn't speak; didn't object to a grown man babbling like a 3-year-old with a cleft palate; and could simply point...
Secret Sharer

Bolton's dirty laundry--if he had any--stays in the hamper

By Patrick Williams
Sep 18, 2003

Well, shoot, that was disappointing. We're talking about fired police Chief Terrell Bolton's appearance this week before a city council hearing. (Jim Schutze writes at length about the event in this week's issue, so yes, Buzz is just piling on. What's your point?) Anyhow, the day before the hearing, Bolton...
Boo-effin'-hoo

Cry us a river, Bolton

By Patrick Williams
Sep 4, 2003

You know you're thinking it. You may have even said something to your spouse or your drinking buddies. But it takes a particularly insensitive jerk to say out loud what many insensitive jerks were thinking privately after fired police Chief Terrell Bolton broke down blubbering at his news conference last...
Oklahoma Snubbed

Dems bolt for Albuquerque

By Patrick Williams
Jul 31, 2003

Well now, that's just plain rude. Buzz is referring to the Texas Senate Democrats' sudden skedaddling to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to deny GOP efforts to redraw congressional district maps more to Republicans' liking--or more to the liking of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom "Mr. Megalomania" DeLay. Eleven Democrats bolted for...
Just Say No...

To the Republican National Committee and DMN Web Logs

By Patrick Williams
Jul 24, 2003

The Dallas Observer is often incorrectly referred to as a "liberal" rag. We're not really; we just run sex ads, which makes us relatively well-paid, not necessarily liberal. You doubt Buzz? Well, smartyboots, we have in our hands an official Republican National Committee "census document" that seeks to delve into...
Community Standards

For the love of money

By Patrick Williams
Jul 10, 2003

So, The Dallas Morning News is going to publish announcements of same-sex unions alongside traditional marriage and engagement announcements. Buzz, being liberal and all, can get behind that. The daily, it announced this week, also is going to be more restrictive on advertisements for firearms, only taking ads from federally...
Big Tent History

Leftovers from The Greatest Show on Earth

By Patrick Williams
Jul 3, 2003

Ah, the circus. What traditional art form better captures the wonder of childhood, the mysteries of nature, the glories of human physical achievement, the... the... Oh, screw it. We won't lie. What we remember of our one boyhood venture under the big top many, many years ago was not some...
Suckahs

Why try to be good when it only turns out bad?

By Patrick Williams
Jun 26, 2003

We here at the Dallas Observer try to do and to be good--at least as good as circumstances allow. Sometimes, we wonder why we bother. (Not that we bother much. But still...) Take, for instance, our April 25, 2002, story "Sweetheart Deal" by Thomas Korosec and Rose Farley, about how...
One for Us

Appeals court grants judgment in libel suit

By Patrick Williams
Jun 19, 2003

A three-judge panel of the 5th District Court of Appeals has granted the Dallas Observer summary judgment in a libel suit brought by restaurateur Dale Wamstad. That means we won, though it's too soon to tell whether Wamstad will appeal. This is good news for Buzz, since we edited the...
Time Warp

Believe it or not, it's 2003 in Highland Park, too

By Patrick Williams
Jun 5, 2003

Each year, the Press Club of Dallas passes out scads of bronze statues of a semi-naked woman--called the Katie Awards--for excellence in local journalism and public relations. Buzz, while not a member of the club (see Groucho Marx's comment re: clubs, membership in), would like to suggest a special prize...
Truth of the Matter

The Mesquite mall is sooo over the rainbow

By Patrick Williams
May 29, 2003

This much we know is true: (PRIZM!) Youth OUTreach is a local organization for gay, lesbian and transgendered young people. On May 2, members of the group decided to get together in the food court in Town East Mall in Mesquite. They sat at tables. They ordered food. They talked...
Down in the Dump

City's new recycling center just can't seem to master recycling

By Patrick Williams
May 22, 2003

One of Buzz's favorite episodes of the TV show South Park introduced characters called "underpants gnomes." They're dim, vulgar pixies who steal little boys' underpants as part of a grand business strategy. The plan? Step 1: Collect a big pile of underpants; Step 3, the profits. The joke is that...
Public Disinterest

So is media consolidation a bad thing?

By Patrick Williams
May 15, 2003

Here's a rhetorical question for you, apropos of nothing, really: How many pictures of dead Iraqi soldiers did you see during the media's wall-to-wall coverage of the war? Buzz watched roughly 40 hours of TV news during the heavy fighting and saw lots of pictures of artillery pieces firing, tons...