I’ve done a few more short posts for Texas Watchdog this summer.

This one is about a State Senator’s connections to an instance of potentially shoddy investigative work by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

This one was fun - a round up of the bills that Texas Watchdog wrote about during the session, and how they fared in the the end. Most failed, of course, on account of the stand off about voter ID.

This one was interesting, about a small news website in Waller, Texas, and a controversy with the local Chamber of Commerce. Sam Houston’s statue gift shop is involved, so you know it gets crazy.

I’m super excited this week because my favorite punk band, Screeching Weasel,  is on their once-per-decade tour, and I’m going to see them in Austin on Friday!

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Screeching Weasel had a relative heyday in like 1993, but before and since they’ve put out over a dozen original albums and almost as many collections of b-sides, “best-ofs”and live recordings. Listening to them all, as I have been this week just to get myself in the mood, you get the same themes reiterated while the aesthetic evolves (a little). It’s pop punk all the way, but their first albums are like impersonations of Suicidal Tendencies, while the later and latest stuff reminds me  of Husker Du. Fortunately, I love it all.

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One of the most humiliating things I’ve ever done was to write a novel anchored in my affection for this band back in 2002. I was 21 and I wrote a whole book, so I forgive myself because that is kinda of an accomplishment. Still, I’m glad that Post-Traumatic Press did only a very small run. It’s mortifying, but when I read it now it’s still the kind of book I like.  It moves fast, it’s about suburban decay and drugs and sex, it’s got jokes and cussing and short chapters. I remember thinking that I wanted to write a book that was a quick read, so I wouldn’t waste too much of anyone’s time.

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This will be my first time to see Screeching Weasel perform. You know those ladies who are crying at Michael Jackson concerts in the 80s? That’s pretty much going to be me. Great.

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The Riverdales, who have the same core members as SW in a modified lineup, a different theme and no particular legacy, is playing on Saturday. I’m going to that one, too.

Had a mildly hellacious experience earlier today, when a Houston area political blogster called me out on getting something wrong in my update on Houston pre-census redistricting lawsuit post for Texas Watchdog. He left a comment saying that me and the Chron reporter, who’s story I quoted, were totally off in our comprehension of a lawsuit. It was a pretty harsh calling out, but I suppose that’s what being a prolific Houston politics blogger is kind of all about, so more power to ‘em.

I went back over the sources I had used to construct the post- a few chron stories, the mayor’s press release, another TWD story, and the judges opinion (which I had apparently given an all-too-cursory reading) - and rewrote the line that had been highlighted by the other guy. Ultimately, I think I mixed up the mayor’s interpretation of the case and what it meant for the city with the legal reality, which was much less interesting but of course, the whole point.

Anyway, it was only minimally traumatic, and I’ll have to be more careful next time. I think it gave my boss a mild palpitation, but she was cool with how I handled it.

Here are a few more stories I’ve done for Texas Watchdog’s blog while I’m getting acclimated.

Tax breaks for Valero Refining

Update on Houston pre-census redistricting lawsuit

City of Austin officials financial disclosures get fully disclosed (analysis and highlights TK)

I’m spending the summer working with TexasWatchdog (dot com), a young investigative reporting organization in Houston. Yesterday I wrote a little thing for their blog, about the Harris County Judge Ed Emmett’s take on, well, just click and read if you’re interested. This is a pretty wonky place, with a hardline focus on government waste, indiscretion and conflicts of interest.

In addition to calling out local government on shoddy compliance with disclosure laws and open records requests, TWD also educates non-journalists on how to dig into government. I like the combination - it’s an alternative model for reporters to work in, and it also seeks to make citizen reporting more effective in case there are ever - yikes - no reporters left.

Time Magazine highlighted TWD in a recent article about how the industry might compensate for declining number of statehouse reporters.

I renewed the URL for my central Texas rock climbing website yesterday. It’s cheap, and I figure the investment somehow motivates me to keep it up. I don’t feature SendAustin on this site anywhere, because I’m not sure how much I want to showcase my talent for talking shit about people and critiquing the physical appearance of, well, everyone.

But speaking of climbing, a few months ago Merrick landed a picture of my friend Blaine Burris (who shares my birthday + a yr) and I on the back page of Rock and Ice Magazine. Merrick is rather predictable - if you wear bright pink he will take your picture and make you famous. Yes, it’s that easy.

My sister is taking a Bollywood class at NYU, so when we went to India this month we saw a movie in every city we visited. My favorite one was Firaaq, which has a notable lack of singing and dancing.

Firaaq uses one of my favorite movie templates, the multiple stories linked in small ways thing. It takes place just after the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots in the Indian state of Gujarat, when people are cleaning up and coming back. Tension is high and everything is a mess.

The same week I saw the movie, a Gujarat minister was arrested for her role in the riots. Maya Kodnani was also denied bail. The primary charge seems to be that she distributed weapons to rioters and directed police not to intervene.

Firaaq is amazing, and I am hoping to watch it with English subtitles soon.

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I am a big fan of Hamish Macdonald, an Al Jazeera English reporter currently stationed, it would appear, in Kabul. Whenever anchors ask him sensationalist questions, Hamish sidesteps with grace and comes back with a fact and  analysis like you get from a reporter who has been listening on the ground for a while.

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I think I also like seeing the familiar North Face puffy.

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Anyway, I was working on something completely different when I found this story Hamish wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald back in 2007, about the series of coups and perpetual ethnic conflict in Fiji. It’s long, packed with background and written in that freaky Australian style. I think I need to read it a couple times to digest. It is a crash course in Fiji for me. But the structure is very straightforward and it’s not hard to follow the logic he used putting the piece together.

It starts with the reporter giving a ride to a local Baptist preacher. They get the preacher’s take on the political situation, and talk to his family also. There are three or four different voices in that part, and an intro to the incumbent and challenging political party leaders, Mr’s Q and B. Then it moves out of that home visit scene…

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So far, this view from the bottom, with its mix of patronage and conspiracies, hasn’t counted much. Bainimarama’s obstacles have mostly come from Fiji’s institutions - the chiefs’ council, the political parties, the legal system, some churches, the mostly Australian-owned newspapers, the human rights groups.

But the day that the grassroots voice will decide has suddenly grown closer, since Bainimarama agreed at a meeting with South Pacific leaders in Tonga on October 17 to hold elections for a new civilian government by the end of March 2009 and to abide by the result.

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Then there are interviews with Mr. B, who offers the standard political lines about the plight of the people, and then I start to lose track of the names and dates. Like I said, it will require an extra reading or two for me.

One thing though, Hamish Macdonald is either younger than me or exactly my age. This is horrifying, as usual, but whatever. I have to repeat what my friend Dave, also young and successful, said when I was bemoaning the state of my career: I have been busy doing other adventurous things. I have been busy doing other adventurous things.

Also, Hamish Macdonald’s website name was taken by another Hamish Macdonald, who uses it to advise wannabe novelists. Of course, with a jobby-job  and international prominence you don’t need a website. I have been busy doing adventurous things.

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My friend and cohort Maura O’Connor wrote about the death of Sri Lankan editor Lasantha Wickramatunga in the Columbia Journalism Review. Since Maura went to Columbia and presumably had to pay her dues, we can forgive her for having such a lush connection. Here’s Maura and I (left) wearing cocktail attire:

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On several occasions in Sri Lanka, strangers told me they had met or spoken to me before. Usually it turned out they had met and spoken to Maura. I wrote it off to white girls all looking the same to Sri Lankans until Australian author Thomas Kennealy made the same error. I consider it quite a compliment.

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Maura and I had very similar gigs in Sri Lanka, interning at English language papers for local salaries while hustling to get some international work. Of course then she totally blew up and got a stringer credit in the WaPo (an unforgivably lush connection that I cannot forgive but that makes me super proud to know her). Still, I related to the scene she set.

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In Sri Lanka, violence is so endemic that it begins to feel routine. Since I arrived here four months ago to work as a reporter for a local newspaper, there have been at least half a dozen bombings, an aerial bombardment of a power plant by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) secessionist group, and a suicide bombing that killed three people and injured thirty-six.

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Despite all this, I have only felt unsafe in Sri Lanka on two occasions: attending a three-day conference celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Colombo Declaration—a document bringing Sri Lankan media together in support of press freedom and media responsibility—and attending the funeral of Lasantha Wickrematunge, the newspaper editor who was assassinated in Colombo on January 8.

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Then she gives  a lucid and deeply-sourced explanation of the disconnect between how Lasantha’s murder was interpreted,  and the facts of who Lasantha was and how he practiced journalism.

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In the foreign press, Wickrematunge became a symbol of press freedom; his life a testament to the terrible costs journalists living in struggling democracies and oppressive regimes must sometimes pay when they “speak truth to power.”

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But some worried that such treatment inevitably buried a deeper conversation—about journalistic standards, truth, politics, and objectivity—that could have been instigated by his death.

For instance, Wickrematunge’s sustained political connections to Sri Lanka’s opposition party, the United National Party (UNP) have been largely overlooked in the press.

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Maura’s energy and thoroughness are inspiring.  I think in this story she hits on something that was under-examined in theSri Lankan local press that we both work for, and the international press we aspire to. Well, I aspire. She appears to be moving on in. So jealous, but she’s awesome so I can’t dwell.