Davidian Branches Out

Davidian now resides in a cheap Beverly Hills apartment, working on a book about Cookeville, which he hopes will provide a future payoff and serve as the basis for a movie script. Between visits to Tennessee, he gathers his material on Cookeville, much in the same fashion as the West Coast-based Drudge covers the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.

"I do it by telephone, and I get a lot of references when I'm there [in Cookeville]," says Davidian. "I go through them, and little by little I get the stuff sorted out and posted. And every month or so, I put out a paper. It's been getting less and less frequent, the more trouble I have with the government." Davidian estimates he works 16 hours a day on the project.

"It's not easy," says the reporter, who figures he's spent $50,000 on his Tennessee media campaign while bringing in very little income. Still, he's uncertain when he'll drop the Putnam County crusade and move on.

"Cookeville's my responsibility," vows the reporter. "They started to mess with me, and I'm not going to let them beat the media. City Hall cannot just lie and withhold documents. I figure if I leave now, it's a victory for the dark side."

Davidian pauses to catch another breath. "Believe me, man, I wish I could go, but it just sends the wrong message to punks in power everywhere that they can just do that."

It's a good thing Davidian isn't still at the Chronicle. It's hard to imagine that medium letting him transmit his message to the power punks of this town.

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