Media News

Veteran Dallas journalist Brett Shipp punches out at Spectrum News

Brett Shipp (left), on air with Lissette Hernandez and Charles Divins

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After four years, Dallas investigative reporter Brett Shipp has left Spectrum News 1, the 24-hour news channel owned and operated by Charter Communications.

Shipp, who has nearly 40 years of experience in local news including 22 years as an investigative reporter with WFAA-TV, joined Spectrum News 1 as an anchor and reporter in 2020 — serving as the marquee name when the station launched its operation in Dallas.

He's the recipient of three Peabody Awards, multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards, and regional Emmys, as well as the only local affiliate news reporter to receive the Columbia University DuPont Gold Baton.

Spectrum was unavailable for comment other than to confirm that Shipp's contract had expired and was not being renewed, and there are apparently no plans to replace him.

Shipp, whose last day was July 31, attributed it to budget cuts, and was rueful but good-humored about it. When he announced the news on Facebook, he posted a shot of his legs — the prototypical photo that people post from tropical vacations — wearing madras shorts, with the caption "My final broadcast at Spectrum News1. So why NOT break out the 70’s party trunks!!!"

Brett Shipp wore madras shorts on his last day in the office at Spectrum News.Brett Shipp

"I didn't want it to fall apart — I was having so much fun, it was the best job I ever had, because they let me be me and didn't try to put the reins on me," Shipp says. "I did documentaries, investigative pieces — I just busted Mike Miles' ass two months ago."

"But I was a number and they needed that number," he says.

Shipp started with Spectrum in Austin where he was doing the 5 o'clock and 9 o'clock news, then transferred two years ago to his hometown Dallas.

"I came back home and anchored news in mornings — we had a ball," he says. "It was a freeform broadcast that was fun to watch. We were just a family — Alex Stockwell and [meteorologist] Ricky Cody. Yesterday was like a funeral."

The Mike Miles piece he refers to was his expose in May outlining a scheme by which Houston ISD Superintendent (and former DISD Superintendent) Mike Miles was moving millions of dollars away from his charter school operations in Texas and diverting public school funds to help pay for his failing charter school operations in Colorado.

Shipp broke the story, which has spawned ensuing coverage by other news sites such as the Texas Observer.

Another highlight during his Spectrum tenure was his role in a two-week immigration series called "Driving the Border: Mile by Mile — Examining the Crisis at the U.S. Southern Border," which aired in June 2021.

Shipp made a 2,000-mile long drive along the border, starting at Brownsville, Texas and ending in San Diego.

"Live broadcast from a new town, a new story, a new challenge for U.S. officials to stop the flow of migrants into the country — it was fascinating, edifying, grueling, and inspiring, and arguably the best assignment of my career," he says.

Shipp retains a youthful optimism for the role that journalism can (but increasingly does not) play in democracy and says he has no interest in retiring.

"We need people who have the ability and willingness to ask tough questions and challenge people in power and politicians," he says. "I'm 65, so I'm probably too old to be hired, but I'm still a champion for the little guy, and I'm not going to stop doing what I do. I ran for political office in 2017, I've done media strategy for companies, I'm just ready to dream up the possibilities and imagine what's next."

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Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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