Meet The Fockers...

"Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press.." - Bob Dylan

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Junior Bonner called from his mobile home in Rio Hondo and warned me about writing this story. "Feelings wear on the top layer of skin down here," he said between swallows of beer that came from a can of Pearl. "But you go right ahead and stroke the hornet's nest. We sure ain't got much to do these days aside from reading the free blogs. Just spell my name right."

I listened and nodded to myself, or rather to the second-story motel window that allows me a view of serious-looking turkey vultures moving over toward Harlingen. A drink of something vicious and this idea will seem better: Rating the area's bloggers and their offerings. We have read most of them during the past few weeks and found that these three are doing the Lord's work on the matter of news & information. If your blog is not on this short list, well, your blog is not passing muster. And, of course, we know that most Rio Grande Valley blogs fall into two main categories: the under-achievers and the amateurish. We also did not review blogs doing nothing but providing copy & paste secretarial crap. Posting press releases also eliminated some from serious consideration.

And so, here they are, in order of their finish:

Number 1: http://www.browntownnews.com/

This blog is an offshot of what used to be Brownsville Literary Review and, before that, El Rocinante. It is a leap in quality from its beginnings, although it still, on occasion, swings below the belt. Still, readers get quality info, if a bit askew at times. Editor Jerry McHale, a notorious newspaper man in his younger days, is a blogger who can write. That may sound profound, but writing is not a talent to be easily found south of San Antonio. Adultery is, as is drinking alcohol and selling tacos or drugs. Downtown Browntown manages to serve snippets of the entire Falstaffian lifestyle that is lived and re-lived in Brownsville, Texas. The border town is known for hallucinated dramas, for unsolved killings of assistant district attorneys, for corrupt local politics, for education histrionics and for treating stray dogs and cats better than homeless wanderers. McHale, a devoted reader of the Gideon Bible found in most cheap motel rooms, chases his main dishes with just enough sides to make a visit to his site a unique experience. Where once he traded in profanity and pornography on El Rocinante, he now sits in the backseat of his mind, catching up on powerful tales he used to ignore in the same way he ignored women with horrible overbites. Mssr. McHale is a singular talent, a blogger often described as a cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Hugh Hefner, with a bit of Roberto Clemente in stories to do with the city's large Hispanic population. Downtown Browntown is new on the scene, but McHale isn't interested in joining the blogging boys on some shared journey. According to a note on his blog, he has entered his "classical" period and, as such, he is finding local streets he never knew existed and local people he never thought were worth a damn, i.e. the ones he once openly labeled lazy buggers. Downtown Browntown is the one RGV blog that forever makes us laugh, and that's saying something.

Number 2: http://www.rrunrrun.blogspot.com/

You read editor Juan Montoya's blog and you immediately sense that this guy is one of those tireless reporters who will get his jollies no matter what. The peripatetic Montoya, too, is a former newspaperman. What readers get on his blog is a boatload of inside baseball to do with the local colleges, the schoolboard, the district attorney's office and an overdose of anything that qualifies as hoary ghosts from that handy shelf of Hispanic border lore - like the escapades of Border Bandit Juan N. Cortina and largely-ignored Hispanic settlers he says made Brownsville what it is today. Those who like his blog tell him his stuff is A-1 in comments submitted after stories are posted. Those who despise him, including other Brownsville bloggers, point to his DWI arrests, alleged non-payment of child support for his three children and a penchant for using bigger, more-high-fallutin' words than he needs to in his reports. The grammar here is at times suspect, but the body of the stories hang nicely. Montoya has a good ear for stories, but at times is said to sell his journalism services in exchange for paid advertising on his website. Still, it's in the low-flying RGV and that helps his case. Montoya would be on the outs elsewhere, like in the Big City, for example, where readers quickly discern conflicts to do with ethics and transparency. Readers are nonetheless rewarded with a steady stream of stories about the city's well-known and well-connected. His ceaseless assault on the UT-Brownsville school president was a key to a local drive to separate her and her UT branch from the town's junior college. In some local circles that was the equal of the downing of the Berlin Wall. His blog is a distant second, but it is second on our list.

Number 3: http://www.myleadernews.com/

Blogger Jerry Deal barely makes this list. That has much to do with a lack of competition and his occasional shirking of objective journalism duties. The 78-year-old Deal is a former editor of the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen with a few Big City newspaper credits, but his standing drops to this level because of two things: He grants the local Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings semi-pro baseball team a free pass on off-the-field issues that include reporting (or, better yet, not reporting) on the team's contract with the city. Deal also will use his blog to, at times, assail people, even while holding hard to his desired reputation as a fair & balanced newsman. In the past, he has been accused of submitting his own comments under fake names and lying about visiting other websites. Still, he operates in the news vacuum that is Harlingen, Texas. In Brownsville, Deal would not compete; in Harlingen he is Top Dog, solely because of the lackluster competition. Also hurting his reputation is a bizarre and childish desire for reader comments. Deal is not above ending his stories with silly sentences such as this one: "Let's get some comments on this issue." That devalues his site and threatens to throw it into the blogging back row, there with Island Footprints and Winter Texan Blues. So, we list him as Number 3, but the distance between Deal's blog and Montoya's is far greater than the distance between Montoya's and McHale's. Maybe next year, Jerry.

Honorable Mention: http://www.brownsvillevoice.blogspot.com/

If you seek legal explanations to serpentine stories moving across Brownsville, this is your blog. It is operated by Bobby Wightman-Cervantes, a disbarred lawyer who stays abreast of things at City Hall and other local governmental agencies. His strength is not in writing as much as it is his knowledge of the law. Wightman-Cervantes can track down - and post - legal filings like Willie Mays tracked-down warning track flyballs for the San Francisco Giants. It was Wightman-Cervantes who first published the story of blogger Juan Montoya's jailing last fall on reckless driving and DWI charges. Indeed, he also posted a photo of a haggard Montoya in the orange garb issued to inmates at booking. It stands as the rare story involving a jailed RGV blogger. Wightman-Cervantes would likely place a bit higher and no doubt challenge for Number 3 if only he could write sentences using proper grammar. A veteran of the U.S. military, he also can be counted-on to deliver news and info related to the plight of the Valley vet, an issue of apparent great import to him. A little less emotion in his stories would also help, as would a change in an approach that often has him telling readers he has more info on his stories, but is forever not ready to reveal it. It water-downs his effort and makes him look like a rank amateur. Still, he is in the mix.

There are some dozen blogs in the Rio Grande Valley, but no other made the cut here...

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