For the past few weeks some bad blood, as they say back on the frontier, had been a-buildin’ between the Fort Worth City Council and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
According to the editorial pages, those sidewinders on the city council had been conducting closed committee meetings, which is not considered kosher In return, the entire council signed a hot letter to Star-Telegram publisher Rich Connor complaining about the paper’s city hall coverage.
Connor, who was dispatched a year ago to Fort Worth by Capital Cities Incorporated, the Star-Telegram parent group, contacted the council and suggested that they settle things peacefully.
On September 11, most of the council arrived, via Connor’s invitation, at the Star-Telegram to have lunch and air things out. That’s when a surprise materialized. A fellow with a legal pad identified himself as Frank Perkins of the little Fort Worth News-Tribune, a weekly with a circulation of about 25,000. Noting that a quorum of the council was present, Perkins said he was there to cover the meeting. For the next hour or so, the rival reporter took notes while the politicians raked Connor and the Star-Telegram over the coals.
The News-Tribune, with a news staff of five, has beaten the Star-Telegram to the punch on a number of stories of local significance, including the impending divorce of Anne and Sid Bass and a quandary the city was in over where to locate the funding for the annexation of the huge Perot Group real estate development.
[The Star-Telegram has other problems. Some of the old-line power brokers around the city have been grousing that ever since Amon Carter Jr.’s family sold the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to Capital Cities in 1973, the paper has been grad-ually overrun with editors from faraway places who don’t grasp the spirit of the community.
“Most of these guys feel like they’ve been shipped out to the provinces,” says one Fort Worth reporter. “They don’t give a damn about the community. They just want to do something that might catch the attention of the Baltimore Sun so that they can get the hell out of town.”
It is true that the Star-Telegram has had some rapid turnover among employees. In early September, managing editor Walker Lundy became the eighteenth editorial member to leave the paper in 1987. Some columnists who had been Fort Worth fixtures for years took the paper up on its offer to retire early, including Tony Slaughter, Jim Trinkle, and Cissy Stewart, the society columnist for thirty-two years. “They were forced out,” says the reporter. “Cissy didn’t go quietly. A lot of leading figures in Fort Worth society wrote a letter to the paper complaining.”
The paper’s critics “are not always wrong,” says publisher Connor. “But since I’ve been here, there have been a maximum of three firings in the newsroom. Walker Lundy wasn’t fired. He thought it was best for him if he moved on. We do have some ambitious new directions for the Star-Telegram, and sometimes that involves new personnel with new ideas.”
Related Articles
D CEO Award Programs
Winners Announced: D CEO’s Financial Executive Awards 2024
Honorees in this year’s program include leaders from o9 Solutions, Baylor Scott & White, and Texas Capital, as well as our Constantine ‘Connie’ Konstans Award winner Mahesh Shetty of ILE Homes.
Basketball
What We Saw, What It Felt Like: Mavs-Clippers Game 2
A gritty game draws Dallas even in the series.
Baseball
What Should We Make of the Rangers’ Accidental Youth Movement?
It's been 26 years since a defending World Series champion leaned on this many young players out of the gate. In Texas' case, that wasn't the plan. But that doesn't make an influx of former first-round picks a bad thing, either.