News reached us earlier this week that Trent Seibert was found dead in his home.
Trent was a tenacious watchdog journalist, a personal friend, and became a friend of many blogHOUSTON writers and readers over the years.
Trent came to Houston ten years ago to start an online watchdog journalism organization (Texas Watchdog), and seemed to fall in love with this crazy city, quirks and all (probably because of its quirks, honestly). He tended to view Houston as a city of opportunity — partly in the Greater Houston Partnership sense that it’s an affordable, growing metro, but partly because he saw an almost limitless supply of corruption and unethical behavior in the Houston-area public sphere that needed to be exposed. And exposing bad behavior by the powerful — especially taxpayer-funded bad behavior — was what Trent lived for.
For a guy who got his journalism chops in New Jersey, arguably the epicenter of public corruption in America, the perspective that the Houston-area had an endless supply of shenanigans to be investigated by watchdog/investigative journalists was an eye opener. Another area in which Houston was/is, indeed, World Class! But not in the Partnership’s sense. Obviously, we quickly became fans of his investigative work.
Over at the Texas Monitor (Trent’s followon Houston-area watchdog outfit), Steve Miller, another fine journalist that Trent pulled in to help cover the Houston area, has penned a great tribute to their late founder, editor, and friend. The Houston Chronicle also put together a nice piece, as did The Press of Atlantic City. Numerous accolades from journalists and news consumers alike can be found on Twitter. Trent had a wide reach. His was a life well-lived, that made a difference, though it ended much too soon.
We will miss him.
Trent will be missed.
Paul Magaziner