I’ve
had a couple of journalism pieces hit in the past two weeks as I worked the
promo for the book, Detroit
Rock City, which has done much better than I expected. As I told
someone before it came out, ‘I read it, liked it and maybe a couple dozen other
people will.’ Appeal seems to be a
little wider than that. I take that as a good sign, although I have no idea of
what composes success in broad terms. Getting published is a success in some
camps. Acceptance has always
dulled my senses, and staying in the outsider camp feels right at all times. It
was a huge coup to me when I started work at the Dallas Morning News. It was as
if the inmate was allowed to be part of the staff at the asylum.
The
journalism I mentioned is a
story I did out of Florida on the state House Speaker Will Weatherford, who
didn’t disclose some business relationships because he didn’t have to. Now that
sounds like a non-story, but it was prompted by a
story earlier in the year I read about his finances, in which he was
weirdly vague about what he did for a living, outside of his role in the
part-time Florida legislature.
I
began to dig about the same time another reporter did, as we both had a reader
in our ear questioning Weatherford’s finances. His piece came first, in July. It
was good, but I read it several times and still didn’t think everything was out
there.
Some
close to the story think it was a tipster who steered me toward the story. But
it was pure instinct after that second story that led me to search business
filings in Texas – which is where Weatherford has some roots – and find he was
connected to an insurance adjuster who did business with the state of Florida’s
insurance company, Citizens Property Insurance.
Next
was a story for the
Fort Worth Weekly on the Tarrant Regional Water District, a government
agency that gave me an amazingly hard time in spring 2012 when I asked to look
over copies of the district’s campaign finance reports for the last few year.
My suspicions were aroused and I filed an open records request for a number of
items, including emails that indicated a lot of inside favor dealing among a
power structure in Fort Worth. Much of those records formed the basis of this
story.
For
most readers, this is dull shop talk. But I dig it and there you go. More books, I’m sure, will roll along
and that’s what so many people are into. I enjoy writing the articles every bit as much as the books.
