A few weeks ago, I called your attention to a Morning News editorial in which the paper took way too much credit for shutting down a crime-ridden motel. The credit really belonged to Dwaine Caraway. Someone brought that fact to the attention of the paper, at which point the editorial was updated in a cynical fashion. Whoever wrote that editorial screwed up. That’s fine. We all screw up. The thing is to correct your screwups in a fair and transparent fashion. (Yes, I know the editorial writer could be a she. Yes, I know I could call the paper and ask who wrote the editorial. I’m choosing to remain ignorant of the authorship so that I don’t make an ad hominem attack here. I don’t trust myself.)
That’s context for an editorial published today that I’d like to point you to. It concerns a group of real estate operators in southern Dallas who have been using a tricky scheme called “adverse possession” to snatch up abandoned houses and then rent them to poor folks under less than transparent conditions. It’s pretty complicated. In May 2014, the paper ran a great series about these real estate operators and the people they have allegedly hurt. The editorial today makes the point that since that series came out, a new law has been passed that could be used to clean up this situation in southern Dallas. According to the editorial:
The law, which became effective Sept. 1, was inspired by a multipart series of Dallas Morning News editorials and columns focusing on the real estate exploits of Douglas T. “Chase” Fonteno and his associates.
It’s just one sentence in the editorial. The piece’s overall thrust is important. The city and the DA’s office should take advantage of this new law. But that one sentence is a screwup.
CBS Channel 11 broke the Fonteno story in 2009, almost five years before the News ran its series that it says inspired the new law. And I’m told by someone with knowledge of this whole deal with Fonteno that it goes back to 2008. That’s when folks from the city attorney’s office and the DA’s office began lobbying state officials to draft something they could use to fix this problem. It takes years to draft legislation and get it passed into law.
The News is doing well to keep pressuring officials to act, but it needs to stop patting itself on the back.
