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: “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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

On occasion, assorted persons–our friends, family and co-workers, chiefly–accuse Buzz of being a cynic. This wounds our heart deeply. Tears on our pillow, etc. etc. How can we be considered cynical, we ask in aggrieved tones, when people generally behave just about as badly as we expect they will? We’re…

Here’s a little inside Dallas Observer baseball for you: Our writers have quotas. They’re expected to write so many stories a year in exchange for continued employment. On occasion, our hardworking reporters find the quota system a bit burdensome. (By “on occasion” Buzz means “always,” and by “bit burdensome” we…

Finally, Buzz brings you some sort of good news. The state of Texas, in its all-too-finite wisdom, has bowed to eons of mammalian evolution and decided that breast-feeding your child is not a sign of unfit parenting. This is particularly good news for Jacqueline Mercado and her boyfriend, Johnny Fernandez,…

Here’s a lesson in standard journalistic etiquette for those of you who aren’t part of the media elite. (And by “elite,” Buzz of course means anyone who knows where to find the chilé-lime fried pork rinds at Kroger.) Often, after you write a story about someone, that someone will call…