Posting this year’s results evokes memories of a year ago, when I found myself embroiled in a ridiculous battle that, to this day, continues to astound and bemuse.  When someone at a major media outlet has the ability to defy ethics and unabashedly assert claims at will without fear of retribution, it is assumed the victim of those words typically has little course for any rebuttal, let alone as large of a vehicle to voice a counter-argument.  In that experience I gained thought-provoking lessons in fielding impatient idiots, disingenuous reporters, and the ability to show how the little guy can indeed have their say.

In a nutshell, since the year 2000 this site holds an annual contest  challenging entrants to find letters taken from various signs downtown scavenger-hunt-style, with a sizable amount of downtown-themed prizes — typically restaurant, shop, and hotel gift certificates — offered to the winner.  The contest is free to enter, and is merely meant as a fun way of encouraging people to explore more of downtown Fort Worth by foot and take in the surroundings.

This game has been a popular feature that many of our readers appear to enjoy every year, as typically the entrant level averages between 500 and 800 people each year.  Because of the expected number of entrants, we allow ourselves enough time to tally the many responses and declare a winner.  Once a winner is identified, they are contacted and told they had won.  Posting the statistics for the entries and the answers wrapped into an article takes time.  For eight years, entrants have always been patient enough to understand this and await the result-bearing article.  Then comes Kevin McCampbell.

My father had passed away in December of 2008 after a seventeen-year bout with cancer.  Due to his heroics as a New York City firefighter in the 1970s, a very kind and detailed obituary was published that made its way virally around the internet and into the hands of relatives in Scotland my brothers and I were not aware we had.  In fact, we find our father had a brother that even he did not know about who was still alive in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Before this discovery, we had originally planned to one day visit Scotland one day withthe idea of spreading my father’s ashes in his parents’ homeland.  After being connected with these new-found relatives, actual plans for the trip quickly materialized.  This was to be what I perceived to possibly be one of the most landmark trips I could ever take in my lifetime, to meet my father’s brother, a man we didn’t know existed, and a man who can shed light on people I’ve directly descended from.  The timing of the trip coincided with the deadline of the scavenger hunt contest.  Suffice to say, knowing most loyal fans of the site are patient normal people, it was presumed a delay in the grading and posting of the contest results would not be much of an issue.

I indeed stood corrected.  The tiny town of Dailly is on the far western coast of Scotland, and near the center of town lay the most serene spot I have ever set foot in throughout all my travels.  Rolling hills dotted with quiet grazing sheep is the backdrop for a small cemetery that contained several gravesites bearing my ancestors’ names.  This is a place I had never dreamed I’d visit, and with me were my brother, my new-found uncle and cousin, and a glass vial of my father’s remains.  I couldn’t ask for a more appropriate place to be for the purpose of spreading his ashes, as it certainly felt this somehow “brought him home.”  Suddenly, breaking the serenity during this momentous occasion, my phone starts to ring.  I fault myself for having the ringer on, but I had promised my wife I’d always be available if she needed to call.  Being in a very remote international location prevented my phone from properly displaying the identity of the caller, so I answered.  Instead of hearing the calm and lovely sound of my wife’s voice, it was the fumbly voice of an erratic and almost frantic man from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram — the very entity that indirectly made this trip possible.

Ever since childhood I have long been a long-standing fan of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  In fact, the Star-Telegram’s Sandra Baker had written a very nice piece on when my wife and I were the first residents to move into “The Tower” downtown.  It is a legendary entity based in downtown and started by one of Fort Worth’s great visionaries, and I am friends with many FWST columnists and employees.

The man on the phone identified himself as Barry Shlachter, which, as a reader of the paper, I recognized as one of the business journalists.  In fact, he shares a business column with Sandra Baker.  He is calling to “investigate” my contest and wanted to know what the hold-up was in posting the results of scavenger hunt winner.  As I slowly turn to look around me and again take in where I was and who I was with, I felt a great deal of shame that I had interrupted my family’s moment by answering this buffoon’s phone call.  Not having any idea what brought this call about, but sensing this man’s desire to craft a story out of this, I politely informed him that I would call him from our hotel later and diffuse whatever charges he was wanting to level towards me.  It took an incredible amount of mental fortitude to disallow that encounter from ruining the moment and the hours-long drive back through the amazing Scottish countryside to our hotel.

Upon my return, I had received an email from one of my good friends who owns a restaurant downtown that supplied one of the prizes to the contest.  He had forwarded to me a number of emails with the disclaimer that an unstable-sounding person has been contacting him and a number of the other owners of downtown businesses who have supplied prizes to our contest, trying to find out details of the contest’s results.  Instead of reveling in the magic that took place that afternoon with my family, I am now finding myself writing to Kevin McCampbell, a contest entrant who is demanding answers.

It starts with a forwarded letter that Mr. McCampbell wrote to Dave Lieber, the Star-Telegram’s self-proclaimed Watchdog:

>> Dave maybe you can help with a small issue. There is a website called
>> downtownfortworth.com they recently held a scavenger hunt thay [sic] I
>> participated in. There was the promise of great cah [sic] and prizes provide [sic] by
>> some of downtown Fort Worth’s high profile merchants ie. Simply Fondue, Omni
>> Hotel, Zambranos etc. As a participant we were asked to identify as many
>> letters of the alphabet that we could from various signs on downtown Fort
>> Worth locations. It was pretty difficult and time consuming not to mention
>> HOT. My fiance and I ultimately found 22 of 26 and submitted our entry
>> before the deadline on 5-31-2009. They claimed on the website that they were
>> going to announce the winners last week but they never did it. The
>> sponsoring merchants deny any responsibilty and are tired of hearing from
>> me….they do claim though that it was legit and the prizes were for real,
>> but nobody will help me get in contact with the people at Downtownfortworth
>> dot com. I know it’s not earth shattering but we worked hard at this thing
>> and we would like some help contacting the website people….not to mention
>> claiming the nice prizes if indeed we did win. Thanks Kevin
>> McCampbell….

In an attempt to tap the inner-zen and warm feelings achieved from earlier in the day, I made it a point to try to reach out to this man directly and explain the delay, though it seemed he was beyond wanting an explanation and had escalated into wanting this fully investigated by The Watchdog®!  He even admits the partners and prize affiliates themselves maintained the contest is legitimate, but still, Kevin, a person who didn’t even bother completing 15% of the contest smells something fishy!  Certainly if there was a sizable entrance fee or if we were giving away a $65,000 boat at stake there may be minimal cause to maybe call shenanigans.  But this is a free contest with a small number of gift certificates supplied by personal friends and professional acquaintenances.  What was Mr. McCampbell alleging exactly?  That there is some sort of underground black market gift certificate ring in place here?

Mr. Lieber’s response was rather to the point:

>> I’ll make sure the editor sees this. Thanks for this. If we can get to it,
>> we will contact you.
>>
>> Dave Lieber is The Watchdog columnist for the Star-Telegram. His column
>> appears Fridays and Sundays in the newspaper and is always available at
>> http://www.star-telegram.com/news/columnists/dave_lieber/.

Now, I hadn’t touched much upon The Watchdog™’s role in this debacle, since I didn’t ever deal with him directly.  What is peculiar, though, is that Mr. Lieber is the gatekeeper to whether user-submitted tips like this are simply crackpot complaints or legitimate enough to warrant investigation.  Since Mr. McCampbell admitted in his letter that he both knows he didn’t win a contest he half-ass entered and also admitted he was bugging the hell out of these businesspeople who have already told him the contest was legitimate, why did The Watchdog® think this ridiculously stupid missive was to become an actual story, even on a slow news day?  Enter Barry.

But first, without feeling that this Kevin deserved any in-depth details, I began an email by appreciating his passion for our contest and understanding his impatience, explaining the nature of the delay and that I am overseas on a trip to honor my “recently-deceased father”.  Even though my father passed on a few months before, concrete plans on a proper burial on what to do with all of his remains were not fully made, and the sudden advent of this trip fulfilled that need.  Contrary to having a coffin and a body, cremations afford relatives time and the ability to plan for such things; there is no rush or time limit.  My letter continued:

> Nonetheless, during this trip I have been inundated
> with calls from unhappy vendors who say they are being somewhat “harassed”
> by you about this, and I am actually taking time away from the rest of my
> family to address this matter with you.
>
> Additionally, I know you worked hard at this and 22 is an admirable feat,
> but every year we’ve done this since 2000, at least one person guesses all
> of the letters correctly, sometimes many do with a tie being broken, but in
> each of all eight years doing this, many have gotten 25 out of 26 correct…
> My staffers back in Fort Worth have already notified the winners (but only I
> am able to update the website), and since you are saying you only got 22 out
> of 26, I can say with certainty, unfortunately, you did not win.  As a
> matter of fact, many people got 25.  I do hope that you at least had a good
> time playing the game, and I hope you give it another shot next year.
>
> While I am grateful you took on the challenge of the contest, as about 450
> others did this year, you must know that it is entirely for fun and if there
> are mitigating circumstances preventing us from updating the site in a
> timely manner such as this one, there will be a delay in the results.  You
> are the sole complainer out of the entire lot of entrants, and your
> contention to the Star-Telegram that this is in anyway fraudulent is beyond
> conceivable to me.  To write them in hopes to expose this contest as
> illegitimate borderlines on slanderous.  Please be careful if you intend on
> pursuing this allegation further.  Specifically during this very emotional
> trip for me, I will say I am not pleased that I have to spend time
> personally apologizing to you for the delay in our results being posted, but
> I will overlook that simply thank you for being so passionate about our
> game.

Admittedly, by the time the third paragraph had come, I unfortunately got emotional.  It is not in my nature to become unhinged by dealing with such stupidity, as it is often humorous.  I suppose it was the circumstances surrounding where I was, why I was there, and that I had to take time away to tend to this absolute ridiculousness.  At any rate, I felt I gave this man enough of my time and was comfortable in feeling that I will post the results upon my return and all will be well in the world.  That is, until I received Kevin’s unbelievable response:

> I will continue to monitor the situation. The statement on the website that
> indicated the results would be posted last week was the one that rankled me.
> I don’t doubt that 22 might not have won I just know that if I put in the
> effort to locate that many as well as 450 other people that there were many
> productive hours that may or may not have been wasted in this endeavor.
> Whether I won or not is irrelevant….I did have fun but that kind of fun
> with the outside chance of no reward I can do without. I am a downtown
> merchant and if I conducted business in a like manner I would have been gone
> a long time ago.

Oh, he will be monitoring the situation.  Suddenly he’s the President of the United States keeping tabs on some sort of hostage crisis.  I had to wonder if his response was indicative of the current “me-culture”, where everything is personal and everyone demands to be entitled to something, or if it was just him being an incessant jerk with an incredible amount of time on his hands.  This guy doesn’t bother completing a contest in its entirety and then complains he can’t do without the outside chance of no reward.  As much as I wanted to ignore all of this, I realized an effort to damage my reputation over this has been put into motion and needed to address that as well as Mr. McCampbell’s general disregard for decency:

Kevin.  There is no “situation” to “monitor”.  The delay in the
website being updated is because I am OVERSEAS at a FREAKING FUNERAL
for my FATHER.  It is as simple as that.  With all due respect, your
level (or lack thereof) of compassion and self-entitlement astounds
me.  But nonetheless, understand this was a GAME.  There is an
“outside chance of a reward” if you actually won.  You didn’t win, so
what exactly is your complaint?   Because you put in a lot of time
entitles you to a prize nonetheless?  It says nowhere on the site or
the cards that ALL entrants will receive prizes.  Many people who
entered spent lots of time finding letters but you enter the contest
with the understanding that if you don’t find the most letters, you do
not win.  Everybody (including those who found more letters than you)
seem to understand this but you.  Nowhere does it say “all entrants
who put in an effort will receive prizes.”  As a matter of fact,
people who don’t win (and come awfully close to winning) routinely
tell me how much fun they had and want to know when the next one is.

I am now taking too much time out of this trip to respond to
what has now become a ridiculous and baseless complaint from someone
who simply didn’t win a contest, so I will not be responding further
after this.

The results will be posted when I return.

And that should have been that.  But there was a word I used in that email that appeared to escalate this even further, and that is the word “Funeral”.  There was a graveside service for my father that took place at a military cemetery on Long Island shortly after his death.  We had only found out about the Scottish relatives’ existence mere days before that service.  My brothers and I knew if we were to ever travel to Scotland and see family grave plots, dad would be coming with us and this would need to be replicated.  Without getting into dictionary definitions and semantics, can you only have one “funeral”?  Can one not honor the same man with ashes from the same cremation in two different places at two different times?  Call me uncultured, but to stand with my father’s actual brother and spread ashes over a grave containing his great-grandparents from the 1700s and beyond in this most serene beautiful place, was a funeral.

Well, Barry Shlachter had a problem with this.  Little could I ever have imagined that all the poignancy and remembrances that were held for my heroic father would now be thrust into the public light 4500 miles away and scrutinized by a man who had the capability of voicing his commentary to the entire city in which I live.  As if things hadn’t gotten obnoxiously stupid already….

From the hotel, I had called Barry Shlachter and informed him of where I was and why I was there, and that is simply why the website will not be updated for a few more days.  I had also explained, despite my having Internet access in Scotland, I was not equipped with enough information to properly formulate my article, though the winner of the contest was already notified, as well as mentioning this contest has been conducted for nearly a decade with a large number of well-known downtown affiliates without any such hitch.  Barry clearly had his investigation cap on.  I picture it to be somewhat like those fedoras that reporters from the 1920s used to wear that had a little card that said “Press” sticking out of it.  He repeatedly would interrupt me and would fire questions at me with great ferocity and speed, giving me the impression this was simply not going to bode well regardless of how I answer his questions.  Instead of simply explaining what happened and diffusing these “allegations”, Barry made damn sure I knew I was now under fire.  All of this, on the surface, was really somewhat funny to me, how serious he was taking this “scoop”, and how certain he was that there was some sort of underlying Pulitzer-winning scandal he was uncovering.  But then it got personal.

On a subsequent phone call, Barry had indicated he’s “done some research” and found that my father’s obituary ran in December 2008.  If my father died in December 2008, how could I possibly be having a funeral for him in June of 2009?  Wow.  Now, not only is our silly little contest being put into question, but now I am forced to defend what I called a funeral??  Oh, but yes I was.  Barry was on the case and he needed answers.  Suddenly the dark cloud of bad journalism started to hover overhead.  Ignoring him was out of the question, as it occurred to me that this man is about to write something horrible about me if I didn’t comply with his idiotic questions.  Thinking that perhaps photographic proof of me spreading my father’s ashes would make this all go away, I sent him a photo of me doing just that.  In the photo I’m wearing what I normally wore during that time, a Hawaiian shirt.  I didn’t feel the need to wear a suit and tie to a small private personal gathering of family to do what we did, and certainly I didn’t think my choice of outfit on that warm summer day would be relevant to anybody.

The following Monday, I wake to find scores of emails from friends who have already seen the damage.  Just when I thought I’ve seen it all, Barry Shlachter, Fort Worth Star-Telegram business journalist to the stars, had effectively mocked in print what I wrote while spreading my father’s ashes at a gravesite.

In Barry’s groundbreaking investigative piece where he uncovers details behind this explosive contest scandal, he decides to include this sentence:

“..Scattering ashes in an Aloha shirt (he sent us a picture) may not be the same as a funeral (his father died in December), but why quibble?”

Hilarious, right?  I not only have to defend the integrity of a website contest, but now have needlessly become the laughing stock of the Fort Worth business community thanks to the asinine commentary of one Barry Shlachter.  I am unsure if he was trying to be funny or whimsical, but that line as well as the purpose of his entire “investigation” (which lasted just that one three-paragraph article) was damaging.  This man is trusted to write important and interesting business news and instead chooses to go this route and personally chide me at a moment that was most sacred to me.  Certainly the powers that be at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wouldn’t endorse this type of behavior?

Indeed they would, as I grossly underestimated the power of tenure and ego.  After chatting with Gary Wortel, publisher of the Star-Telegram, it became clear that Barry had the flexibility to say these types of things without fear of consequence.  “Don’t worry,” Mr. Wortel had reassured me, “people will forget all about this by tomorrow.”  In our world of immediate gratification, anything that happened four hours ago is now “old news” so it’s no surprise that a newspaper publisher holds that perspective.  To us victims of such shoddy journalism, though, articles like that resonate indefinitely.  During our conversation, I had mentioned that all I really wanted was some sort of apology.  Show any of the scores of incensed readers who posted support of me in the same article’s online comment thread (which has now been removed) that this man actually has a conscience and recognizes the insensitivity of his unprofessional writing.  But no, an apology was not to be had.  Not by Barry and not by the Star-Telegram.  They stood by his insultingly unnecessary article out of principle.  It’s completely out of character and a great downgrade of Barry’s ego to actually come forward in his column and say “You know, I said something completely out of line, and I truly apologize for it.”  He doesn’t feel bad and he doesn’t feel it was unprofessional.

In fact, the Star-Telegram is so loyal to defend his honor, they have effectively killed a story already in the works by Aman Batheja, the original obituary-writer, about how the Scottish relatives discovered us via the Star-Telegram itself!  What was to be a touching and amazing story about how that very paper was integral in connecting me to unknown overseas relatives was now canned simply because I dare challenge Barry on his poor choice of words.  How often does a newspaper — of all things nowadays, a newspaper! — have the chance to connect a long-lost family an ocean away?  Aman, who had earlier asked me to supply him with photos and information from my trip now had to tell me that they were “no longer running that story”.  Aw.  Lost was an improbable and heart-warming Star-Telegram-Brings-People-Together tale! And why?  Blacklisted!

The week that “article” ran, a prominent well-known business leader in downtown Fort Worth caught up with me on the sidewalk to tell me not to take what Barry did to heart, as I was told Barry is often trying to bait details from him about certain projects’ developments in a perceived effort to conjure up controversy.  It was nice hearing that others in the business community had this impression and that I wasn’t alone in thinking he was a journalistic hack.  Also in the course of that week, support came on many popular blogs including a website called McClatchy-Watch, a collection of posts that detail misdeeds at any of the McClatchy-owned newspapers, such as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  The many comment posts yielded some great dialogue on the matter, and scores of people came forward to voice their support.  In fact, The Fort Worth Weekly awarded Barry Shlachter one of their “2009 Turkey Awards” for this writing stupidity.

The overwhelming comments and re-posts railing against Barry’s actions were humbling and made me feel that perhaps I wasn’t just taking what he wrote entirely out of context and I am thankful that I was not alone in calling him out for his unethical actions.

All in all, though, after a year has gone by, I don’t hold any ill will towards the Fort Worth Star-Telegram itself.  I can’t fault a 125 year institution by the misguided choices of a handful of people.  And as for Barry, I’m sure as a person he’s just a swell guy that’d be great to sit down and sip aged scotch with, but his outright refusal to acknowledge his mistake speaks volumes about his character, and therefore as it stands, my opinion is that he’s simply an ass.