Eye on the East Bay
Contra Costa Times
Posted:   03/02/2014 12:00:00 AM PST

Richmond's councilman journalist: The Eye has written before about the explosion of journalistic endeavors in Richmond, where every City Council meeting borders on slapstick and the streets are rife with gritty yarns. But now an unlikely raconteur has thrown down the gauntlet -- and done so with vigor. When The Center for Investigative Reporting published a scathing exposé about the city's Housing Authority, The Eye expected the typical response: outrage, action and finger-pointing by embattled city officials.
What was unexpected was that Councilman Tom Butt, a 69-year-old Point Richmond architect, would pick up his pen and fire back with a nearly 5,000-word exposé of his own, dissecting the center's report and concluding that it was "oriented more toward sensationalism and hyperbole than toward objective reporting."
Butt, who published his piece de résistance on his popular website, grabbed his pen, pad and camera and swooped into the Hacienda housing project, a six-floor, 1960s-era concrete structure that loomed large in the Center for Investigative Reporting's multipart series.
The councilman, who speaks in a syrupy Arkansas drawl, chatted up managers and residents at the 150-unit complex, snapping pictures of clean apartment units and smiling residents.
Butt dismissed portions of the series, including reports of cracks in the building, which he wrote were actually expansion joints. In sum, the councilman-turned-investigative-journalist concluded that he debunked many of the myths purveyed by the more seasoned journalists who called his city's leadership into question, even dusting off a journalistic concept rooted in the turn of the 20th century to complete his counterpunch.
"The condition and operation of public housing in Richmond is clearly less than desirable, but the reality is not nearly as bad as (CIR) portrays it," Butt wrote. "(CIR) must think they have done a great service by taking on Richmond's public housing, but what they have done borders on yellow journalism, striving for sensationalism while ignoring both reality and the bigger picture."
Staff writers Paul Burgarino, Robert Rogers and Tom Lochner contributed to this column.