I was recently invited by the Houston Chronicle's Dwight Silverman (via Lisa Falkenberg) to join the Chronicle's blog section on www.chron.com.
So today, I'm starting a second blog over with the Chronicle. It's called "Criminal Background", and you can reach it by clicking here.
To be clear, nothing is going to happen to this blog.
There are some rules and parameters that I have to follow over with the Chronicle that will necessitate it being a little more toned down than what we talk about over here, so please keep that in mind (ahem, Rage).
I'm excited about the opportunity to reach out to more readers through the new blog. We may have more "insider" debate on this blog, but I think the Chronicle blog will be a chance to educate more people about how the Criminal Justice System works in Harris County.
I'll need y'all's help. Please help me with your input (either through the comments or your off-blog e-mails) on the different sides of different issues. Remember that it is a family newspaper so we need to keep the comments clean (ahem, Rage).
And while we are on the topic of the comments, I will probably be a little more restrictive on folks posting as "Anonymous". If you like the blog over there and want to comment on it, I'd appreciate it if you developed a pseudonym so that the readers can identify your perspectives by authorship. I'm not saying you need to sign your name, but I'd love to see regular and easily-identifiable commenters over there.
And, as always, I'll appreciate your input on the blog itself -- whether publicly or privately.
(NOTE: From a technical standpoint, the blog layout over there is a little different from the one I'm used to here, so please have patience if it takes me a little bit to figure out how it all works.)
26 comments:
I'm tame compared to some of your ADA buddies.
And if you're looking for different perspectives, you're going to need folks like me to comment. This blog is about as diverse as the University of Alabama in 1960. It's just a sounding board for disgruntled ADA's who, when they do comment on something besides how much they hate their job, sound like a chorus of Sharon Kellers.
** I'm excited about the opportunity to reach out to more readers through the new blog. We may have more "insider" debate on this blog, but I think the Chronicle blog will be a chance to educate more people about how the Criminal Justice System works in Harris County.**
I think your current blog audience is more "outsider" than you'd think, although certainly there are a large number of specialists in the audience. I'll be interested in what sort of comments you get on the other site. I'm willing to bet a beer the ones here will be of higher quality. :)
Following multiple blogs by the same person on generally the same subject is kind of a pain (although I understand it's good for the Chron's pageviews/advertising). Can you do us a favor and either crosspost your material here or at least provide a link/summary to whatever you post over there when it differs from the content here?
Congratulations Murray!
For whatever reason, Lisa Faulkenberg seems to be as disgusted with how Pat Lykos has performed as DA as those who are privy to the actual day to day workings at the criminal courthouse.
Your new blog will be a wonderful opportunity to spread the TRUTH about Pat Lykos and Jimmy Leitner to a much greater segment of the voting public.
Knowledge is power and when your rapidly growing audience begins to appreciate what is REALLY going on at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center.........these new readers will be shocked and repulsed.
Libya is an Omen for Lykos......
We knew him when . . .
We knew him. When?
We knew. Him? When?
As with most things, perspective (and how you choose to punctuate) is all-important.
Congratulations!
Congratulations Murray! Show even more people your wit, sense of humor, amazing writing ability and twisted perspective on "that" world. Gotcha down as another Favorite. ks
Considering it is April Fools Day, I am a tad skeptical. But after following this blawg through law school and into practice, I have no doubts that your commentary would be a welcome and valued addition to the Chron.
Congrats, Murray. And if you think the comments here are vicious, just wait until you see those on Chron.com.
Best of luck, and I guess I need to add a new link on my favorites bar.
Murray, your idea to replace annonymous postings with pseudonyms is a great idea for your new blog and you won't need to worry about Rage posting any comments since he's too much of a pussy to reveal an email address that could be cross referenced with an IP #. Imagine if that POS was outed. LOL.
Your new blog will be a wonderful opportunity to spread the TRUTH about Pat Lykos and Jimmy Leitner to a much greater segment of the voting public.
HA! See what I mean? I am certain your new blog can discuss topics that directly affect Harris County citizens to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year, like over-incarceration, failure to use cite and summons authority, failure to use PR bonds, etc...
Or how about issues like failure to use best-practices in police line ups, since faulty ID's are the single largest cause of false convictions? I know we've disagreed on that topic before, but you're playing for the other team now, and you can respectfully discuss these topics that will ultimately benefit taxpayers and your clients alike.
Rage
since he's too much of a pussy to reveal an email address that could be cross referenced with an IP #. Imagine if that POS was outed. LOL.
And THAT validates my first point perfectly. I'm not the one who needs to keep it clean.
I swear, predicting how y'all will behave is like shooting fish in a bucket.
Rage
April fools???? Hmmmmm
Congrats, Murray! What a great opportunity for you. Oh, and love the picture on the new blog! Ha, Ha!
Nope, this is not an April Fool's Day joke, although I do love those. As I've mentioned before, I had a long tradition with my grandfather always pulling them on me when I was young. I got a pretty good one last year, but this year, I got nothing.
Now, before we go off on abusing Rage, I would like to point out that (although I often disagree with him), I do like that he has an identifiable pseudonym so we at least know we are talking to the same author of the comments. The same goes for Black Ink, Twilight Zoned, Thomas Hobbes, and others. It is much easier to keep track of who said what rather than a series of "Anon + Time Stamp"s.
Rage, I plan to keep the Lykos bashing off the Chron blog. And I will address the issue of Double Blind line ups and photo spreads in the near future. I mean, I will criticize her policies if I feel they are relevant to the general public.
Oh, and by the way, Kevin Whited, you think FOLLOWING multiple blogs is a pain, try WRITING multiple blogs!
Congratulatons are over due,
Murray Newman----Who knew?
I for one am very proud,
Murray stands above the crowd.
Now that the Comical has Newman aboard,
Soon the troll will die by his sword.
Murray Newman's most eloquent pen,
Will surely slay the old wretched hen.
The blue haired witches of the Lykos clan,
Will dump that bitch as fast as they can.
Little man Leitner will squeal like a pig,
When Murray Newman hits the mark with his gig.
Jimmy Leitner brought us the troll with his lies and deceit,
I will cheer his eviction from my head to my feet.
Jesse Tata reveals the dangers of rift,
Probable cause is not a trial ready gift.
A man shoots his girlfriend 4 times and confesses no bail.
Lykos won't take a plea to life on this whale.
Instead Lykos wants a publicity trial,
Lately Capital stats don't make a big pile.
Gig the bastards Murray!
Murray Newman's
Way to go! Who would have thought. I remember sending your blog site address to Lisa. Told you she was fair. I'm happy that the general public will now have a glimpse of what goes on with Lycos. I know your new blog won't be quite like this one, but, I feel sure that you will get your point across in a nice way of course.
Criticize away, I'm probably right there with you. But there are bigger issues out there than just how Lykos is running the office. That affects rank and file prosecutors, but not criminal justice as a whole. That's all I'm saying.
What are your restrictions on the chron blog
I'd say let's just keep the language clean and avoid the personal attacks on each other, generally. I'm hopeful that the Chronicle blog will be more informative to outsiders and this one will remain more in tune with what insiders are talking about.
Look at it this way, you won't see a blog post on the Chronicle about a moves memo. Here, we'd find it worthy of discussion. There, not so much.
I kind of look at the Chronicle blog as the way I'd talk about our jobs in polite company. We talk about the interesting details that non-lawyers might be interested in and it will sound completely different than prosecutors and defense attorneys talking about cases over a beer.
I guess the bottom line is, let's try to keep it a little more polite over there.
Have they told you to go easy on the Judge? Have you spoken with Brian Rogers about this?
Still waiting for you to edit your post to replace "(ahem, Rage)" to "(ahem, ADA's)".
Thanks
Are you going to be making any open records request for the new blog?
Anon 8:12 a.m.,
The Chronicle didn't give me any parameters about what views I could or could not express on the blog.
Rage,
When did you start getting so sensitive? You know I was just joking.
Anon 2:36 p.m.,
Don't have any open records requests planned, did you have a suggestion? I'm just blogging for the Chronicle, by the way. Its not like I got deputized as a reporter or anything!
Are you being paid?
Anon 6:58, are you one of my ex-wives?
No.
Not sensitive, just making the point that even though you may agree with them more than me, I keep it much cleaner than they do.
Rage
Why give Chron free content?
Anon 8:48 a.m.,
I write my blog without getting paid anything for it. I just like to write.
I actually appreciate the opportunity that Dwight Silverman and the Chron folks are giving me to have a chance to have a potentially wider audience.
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