Nearly a month ago, I was enjoying a nice Friday afternoon in St. Louis when I got a phone call from Councilmember Angela Hunt. It was the weekend after the mayor’s race and I couldn’t imagine what news I was missing out on back home in Dallas.

“Did you read the post by Tim Rogers on FrontBurner?” Hunt asked.

I said no and explained I was spending the weekend in Missouri. She then said Rogers wrote that a man (Joe Carter) working for her organization, TrinityVote, was convicted of second-degree murder in 1991. Hunt told me she let him go and wanted to let me know before I heard it from somewhere else.

Normally, any big news related to the Trinity Parkway debate would go right up on Dallas Blog, but I didn’t get the big deal. In fact, the same things going through my mind were in Rogers’ post.

“…just because a guy killed someone 16 years ago doesn't mean he hasn't paid his debt to society and he isn't a good signature-gatherer,” Rogers wrote. “I want to stress that unless Carter is violating his parole or something, there's no reason to suspect he isn't an efficient, responsible coordinator of signature-gathering efforts.”

The icing on the cake was at the end of the post where Rogers pointed out that the same man previously had worked for the other side, Save the Trinity.

So I went on with the rest of my weekend and upon my return, I looked at Rogers’ post. I was way more interested in the first part that said, “Informed speculation puts the number of signatures gathered so far by the referendum-seeking TrinityVote organization at about 20,000.”

“Informed speculation” is as loose as it gets when it comes to attribution, but you have to figure the executive editor of D Magazine is likely to have some strong sources who are more “informed” than the rest of us.

So on June 22, one week before the deadline, Rogers reported that TrinityVote had less than half of the required 48,000 signatures needed for a November vote. Then when Hunt dropped off 80,000 signatures at City Hall, I waited for Rogers’ response.

At 3:16 p.m. July 2, almost exactly 72 hours after Hunt’s announcement, Rogers responded to an email from someone who indicated Rogers had engaged in the same skewed reporting as the Dallas Morning News in its mayoral poll as Wick Allison had suggested in another FrontBurner post.

I had major issues with Rogers’ response, starting with his statement that he hadn’t had time to keep up with “all this Trinity business.” In a post today, Rogers called this issue “the most contentious, high-profile civic matter going.”

Rogers’ excuse was that he was busy working on D Magazine. However, he wasn’t too busy to write a response to an iPhone-related post on Sunday after Hunt made the announcement and to post two haikus on Monday before addressing the Trinity issue. I guess we know where Rogers’ priorities are.

1. D Magazine

2. the iPhone

3. haikus

4. the most contentious, high-profile civic matter in Dallas

As for the defense of his “informed speculation,” Rogers offered this:

“The informed speculation came from someone with a dog in the fight. And, yeah, it was pretty far off. But I do believe that my tipster sincerely believed the information. So I figure Hunt's referendum team did a masterful job of leaking to the other side information indicating that their own effort was failing -- thereby gaining an advantage. By making themselves look weak, they gave the opposition little reason to pull out their big guns.”

This is the part that really pushed me over the edge. I was having a flashback, which I’ll explain in just a second. But first, to suggest that Hunt or someone in her organization leaked any information without any proof is unethical. He makes a mistake by trusting some tipster with “a dog in the fight” and gets burned, so he turns it around and makes it sound like Hunt is the one being dishonest?

Now to my flashback. Most of you probably don’t know this, but I’m finishing my bachelor’s degree at SMU this summer. I only mention it because it was in a media ethics class when I met Tim Rogers back on April 24.

Rogers was invited to speak about ethics related to blogging. There were a couple things he said that surprised me, especially related to his ethics at FrontBurner. However, I never posted anything about it because I didn’t have a tape recorder with me and I thought it wasn’t worth starting some kind of a feud.

Rogers’ use of a questionable source in this story got me thinking back to that day in April and I wished I had the audio. If only someone had taped it. Then I did some digging around and presto! An aspiring young journalism student not only taped it, but still had it after nearly three months.

I remembered Rogers saying something fishy when talking about FrontBurner’s coverage of the rumor that Rick Perry was gay, and it gives insight into the way things are done over at D.

“We’re not going to spend a lot of time tracking stuff down like that because that sounds like real work. That sounds like making phone calls. That sounds like maybe asking for documents and we’re not going to beat the daily press -- radio, television and newspapers -- to the story,” Rogers said. “So, we could waste a week tracking that stuff down and then it shows up in the newspaper and we’ve wasted all our time doing it. So, we kind of report stories like that -- if you want to call it reporting -- passively.”

Rogers said there are approximately 200 people who email tips to FrontBurner. He said he knows which tipsters are trustworthy and “kinda” knows where they work.

“Is that ethical? I don’t know,” Rogers said. “I don’t know these people. A lot of them I haven’t met face to face.”

Rogers went on to talk about a post he made about the relationship between Sarah Dodd and David Kunkle. It’s ironic that Trey Garrison, the guy I replaced here at Dallas Blog, covered the story for D Magazine. Anyway, Rogers got a tip that Sherry Jacobson at the Dallas Morning News was working on a story about it and he went ahead and made the post.

“What do you think about that?” Rogers asked the class. “I hadn’t made a single call.”

Of course, Rogers’ tipster was right, but his comments certainly raise questions about the ethics he is using to obtain information. If Rogers is relying on emailers whom he’s never met and isn’t taking time to do independent research and reporting, is he doing his due diligence as executive editor of D Magazine?

Rogers and I don’t see eye to eye when it comes to ethics, but we can agree on one thing. The Trinity Parkway debate is a matter of significant importance to the City of Dallas.

The next time Rogers gets a tip, he can do the city a great service by verifying the information before he reports it. The stakes are too high to risk getting it wrong.

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