Rocks Off Threw Wrench Into U of H & Rice's Secrecy Plan

Note: Not an actual Rice or U of H media rep.

​This morning the Texas Watchdog published a follow-up to yesterday's story, which released several emails from the consulting firm the University of Houston hired to negotiate its purchase of KTRU. These emails encouraged U of H to concoct a "cover story" to mask its intentions to purchase the largely student-run station, whose staff was kept completely in the dark about the ongoing negotiations.

Or almost, anyway. Secrets can be hard to keep, and today's Watchdog story details how the U of H and Rice media offices attempted to "batten down the hatches" after a KUHF staffer broke the confidentiality agreement and told someone at KTRU what was going down.

Not terribly long after this, Rocks Off got wind of all this and did what we were supposed to. After we checked the online agenda for the upcoming U of H Board of Regents meeting and noticed the item about purchasing a radio station - which was unnamed, which may have been a big boo-boo - we called both universities' media offices, told them what we found and asked what was going on.

They basically shined us on, because, it turns out, they already had an agreement with the Houston Chronicle to "embargo" the story until the day of the regents' vote, at which they did approve the KTRU purchase.

Check out the emails for yourself, via the Scribd Web site, after the jump. We feel so... used.

Click image to enlarge

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How about that? Read today's Watchdog article here.