Reply #70: Yes. [View All]

[robertarctor]

AFAIK, what he was working on were local and/or California-related stories. He'd left writing for a while and had a job in the California State Capitol, which ended when Gray Davis got replaced by the current incumbent last year. He got a job at the local weekly this year, and wrote two cover stories--one on the first-person-shooter computer game "America's Army," and the other on how Sacramento County is now using red-light cameras as a revenue stream, and the county Sheriff's connection to the Lockheed Martin subsidiary that sells and maintains the cameras. You can read those stories, and the shorter pieces he'd written, at the weblink I posted above.

It's my understanding that Webb had taken some time off to deal with moving out of the house where he'd lived with his wife and kids until their marriage came apart, and I'm not sure what he was working on at the time of his death.

I understand why people jump to conclusions whenever an investigative journalist is found dead, particularly if that journalist has written pieces critical of the regime holding power. These are strange times, and other actions of the current regime, and the profoundly anti-democratic attitudes toward the public that it presents, certainly serve to inflame those suspicions. But sometimes there are other forces in play, which are utterly mundane. Please consider them, and let this man rest in peace.