Yesterday the Dallas Morning News published its long-awaited opus on Kern Wildenthal. Wildenthal is the former head of UT Southwestern. He currently runs the school’s fundraising charity, the Southwestern Medical Foundation. It doesn’t look good for him. While he has enjoyed enormous success getting people to donate money (more than a $1 billion), he also appears to have enjoyed himself a bit too much. The News looked at scads of his travel receipts and found that Wildenthal’s mix of business and pleasure ran at times a little lean on business.
Here are my questions:
1. The main story (there are sidebars) is 6,300 words long. For a newspaper, that’s really long. How do you write that many words about Wildenthal’s fundraising methods and not mention the whole Wendy Reves deal? You will recall that Reves’ son filed a lawsuit against the Dallas Museum of Art and Wildenthal, claiming that the two pulled a fast one in getting their respective institutions into Reves’ will. Late last year, a U.S. judge threw the case out. But it’s far from over. Reves died in France. The French courts are still busy with the matter. That Wildenthal was accused of manipulating an old widow to get millions of her money for UT Southwestern seems germane, no?
2. Why isn’t this monster story — a story that DMN reporters have been working on for something like two years — promoted on the paper’s homepage?
PS: I’m sorry. That’s actually three questions.
