Pegasus News content partner interview: West and Clear

by Alex Bentley

Though content partner West and Clear has only been on site a little over a year, contributor Steve Smith has been on the site since 2007 with his blog, The Caravan of Dreams. West and Clear focuses on pretty much anything and everything in and around Fort Worth, from politics to the arts to restaurants to the goings-on at the Star-Telegram. Below is my e-mail interview with Smith.

Pegasus News: Tell us about the history of West and Clear – when did it start, why was it started, and what is the meaning behind the name?

Smith: West and Clear began in October 2007 when my four partners and fellow Fort Worth bloggers – Kevin Buchanan, Pete Geniella, Bernie Scheffler and Pete Wann – decided to join forces and create a Fort Worth superblog. We wanted in to be about Fort Worth and decided to name it after the two forks of the Trinity River – the West and Clear – that converge at downtown Fort Worth. I think it’s the best blog name ever.

Pegasus News: You initially joined Pegasus News with your blog, The Caravan of Dreams. Why did you join West and Clear and why do you devote more of your energy toward that site than Caravan nowadays?

Smith: As much as time permits, I try to keep up with the Caravan, but it’s more of a personal blog and kind of a toy department. West and Clear became my focus because I enjoy working with my friends to create an online conversation about the city we are all very passionate about.

Pegasus News: Though West and Clear consists of five different writers, you are by far the most prolific. Why is that, and do you think that will continue for the foreseeable future?

Smith: It ebbs and flows. When my partners and I created a company called Panther City Media to sell advertising revenue, we decided to let Kevin focus on his architecture and urban development blog (FortWorthology.com) and PeteG put together and Fort Worth-focused online discussion (EightOneSeven.com). Bernie has had a lot of his tied up working on the State Senate campaign for Wendy Davis and is now her communications director and legislative aide in Austin. PeteW and I have spent a lot of time working on West and Clear, but change has been a constant, so I can’t really predict what will happen. We’ll roll with it.

Pegasus News: You've written about everything under the sun in Fort Worth – politics, music, food, the arts, etc. Which area is your favorite to cover, and is there any other topic you'd like to cover or haven't been able to cover as much as you'd like?

Smith: I hate writing about politics because it usually brings out more heat than light. It’s really more frustrating than anything else because the status quo is so entrenched. Watching all the TV commercials for the Trinity River deal in Dallas makes me jealous. I wish we had some opposition with some money to spend to make things more entertaining.

One area our readers enjoy talking about is dining, but I’m not very good at writing about food. On the other hand, I’m really interested in writing about music, but our readers have never latched on to that. One area that might surprise some people about Fort Worth is the local film scene. There is some interesting under-the-radar type work going on with James M. Johnston, Tom Huckabee, Andrew Disney and others that are making things interesting.

Of course, there is also gas drilling. That can be fun to write about because to have a good drama, you need a good villain. Chesapeake Energy fills that role quite well. All of their public facing people are so well-scrubbed, polished and on-message that they seem very Manchurian Candidate. They work so hard to seem authentic that they are the opposite.

Pegasus News: You've been following the woes of the Star-Telegram pretty closely – what are your thoughts about what's happening with the paper and the newspaper industry in general?

Smith: Talk about something I no longer enjoy writing about. As a former S-Ter, I probably know more unemployed people now than ever, and I hate it. That said, I can’t stop watching. I really feel like the S-T and DMN brought all this on themselves. There was a lot of hubris, like their entire business model couldn’t come crashing down. But it has. What’s more exciting to me is what will come next. Someone will invent a model that works that is much smaller and more efficient and everyone will talk about it like it is the most natural thing in the world, like it was inevitable. But it doesn’t seem so obvious now, does it?

Pegasus News: What would you like your readers to get out of the site?

Smith: I always believed that the best stories in a newsroom never got in the paper, and I always wanted to let people know what was really going on. That’s hard, hard work, and I’m having a harder time trying to do that. Right now, if I can clue in people that there are interesting things going on in Fort Worth that they need to support, I’d be happy with that.

Pegasus News: How much of a role, if any, do readers play in how you approach what you write about?

Smith: It’s all about the readers, in my opinion. I started blogging because I like to write, but now I’m a lot more interested in reading what the audience is saying. We’ve been lucky in drawing out people who like lively discussion about what’s going on in their town. We try to write about what people want to read and nurture the discussion. Some days we do better than others.

Pegasus News: What do you see as the future of West and Clear?

Smith: I have no clue. We have tried to encourage other Fort Worth blogs and it seems new interesting Fort Worth bloggers are coming online all the time. Beyond that, I couldn’t even guess.

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