[WB1] The Defector broke some news this weekend about the Houston Chronicle, which reportedly parted ways with former Texans beat report Aaron Wilson over comments he made to a Boston sports radio show about the Deshaun Watson situation. The Houston newspaper frequently serves as a Rah-RAH outlet for its institutional sources (see METRO and the Texans coverage in particular), but apparently, one CAN go too far in promoting the party line.
[WB2] Houston Public Media reports that “more people are violating felony bonds in Houston” but nobody “can agree on a solution.” Some solutions are, nonetheless, slowly moving forward in the legislature.
[WB3] Former HPD Chief Art Acevedo rightly points out that area courts need to reopen and get on with the business of delivering justice. With vaccines becoming more widely available and COVID numbers rapidly improving, there are no more excuses. Even the county judge hints that her backwards RED ALERT STAY HOME gage thingie, which the area tuned out many months ago, might soon receive an adjustment.
[WB4] The Washington Post checks in on “George Floyd’s old neighborhood (the Third Ward) and finds that things don’t seem to have improved much over the years. So strange that decades-long uninterrupted Democratic control of the city and Democratic representation of the area in Congress haven’t been able to improve matters tangibly, hrm?
[WB5] You know what the Harris County Republican Party needs a whole lot more than 10,000 enthusiastic poll watchers? More people with a clue and passion about winning elections: Good candidates and volunteers to help them (and money).
[WB6] A Chronicle report notes that the tunnel businesses under Houston’s current (during COVID) ghost of a downtown business district are facing an uncertain future. Aren’t we all? (See section on Houston’s future here)
[WB7] A bill has been introduced in the state legislature that would create a regional taxing district to support a Gulf Coast storm barrier (what some call “The Ike Dike”). Hurricane Ike took place nearly 13 years ago.
[WB8] Oscar Slotboom argues at Houston Strategies that we shouldn’t view the I-45 expansion plan (which is being challenged in court by Harris County) as an expensive boondoggle that will displace neighborhoods, but rather as “a transformative urban improvement project for Houston.”
[WB9] Houston Public Media (NPR) has a relatively inexperienced reporter who apparently REALLY wanted to show that Houston has had a surge in Anti-Asian hate crime. One big problem: The data don’t show any such thing. So, rather than waste a carefully crafted narrative, Houston Public Media just moves on to the predictable “BUT” and “experts say” excuses for why the hard data should not be believed.
This is the new state of journalism.
[WB10] People will have different takeaways from these sorts of collections of vignettes that have become popular in journalism. This is one that is probably not going to make me popular: If you’re feeling sick with a potentially transmissible illness, please don’t go to work. Not now, and not post-COVID. Thanks!
[WB11] Mask theater will be continuing for the foreseeable future at Houston’s premier outdoor performing arts venue (Miller Outdoor Theater), even though there’s not much reason to believe that COVID-19 is easily transmissible in outdoor settings.
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