The Sooner Scrouge

He has been denounced on the floor of the Oklahoma legislature, been called "bastard" by state officials and a "lying s.o.b." by a newspaper publisher. A fellow editor once threatened to "slap his teeth out," while another stormed that he was not fit to lick boots. To such aspersions "Frosty" Troy retorts: "I'm a zealot." Then he returns to making more enemies in his job as the publisher, editor and principal reporter of the Oklahoma Observer (circ. 4,164), a twice-monthly tabloid that hits wealthy and powerful Sooners like a dust storm. Says Ed Hardy, press secretary to Oklahoma Governor David Hall: "Frosty knows where the bodies are buried. Oklahoma has never seen anything like him."

Troy is indeed a rare man among Oklahoma journalists. He has scourged major state industries--oil, gas and insurance--for gaining influence through blatant lobbying. He has exposed corruption and conflicts of interest in state and local governments and relentlessly crusaded against inadequacies in state mental health programs and prisons.

His methods are not subtle. Troy hurls epithets like "moron," "featherbrain" and "cream puff" at his targets. A recent Troy article on graft in the awarding of state building contracts reeks with outrage: "Spending a weekend reading the transcript from the Oklahoma County grand jury is like being trapped in a sewer for two days. Pustules of corruption sear your senses and you search in vain for some escape from the smothering putrefaction."

Tangible Results. Troy's strength as a muckraker rests not in his prose but in his grasp of Oklahoma affairs and his vigor in finding new facts. He talks easily on such matters as the concentration of private wealth in the hands of relatively few Oklahomans and the amount of state tax paid by oil companies in 1973. While doing legwork in the state capital, Troy is a one-man information clearinghouse. He gets tips from other newsmen whose papers are cool to exposes. Legislators and their aides regularly quiz him on state issues.

Troy's expertise has given his paper an impact well beyond its meager circulation (all but nine of Oklahoma's 149 legislators are paid subscribers; Troy sends the holdouts complimentary copies). Some of his crusades have brought tangible results. His story on the "shame of Oklahoma" prompted Governor Hall to end a barbarous solitary-confinement system at the Oklahoma state penitentiary. His demands for tax reform finally helped to produce legislation that included the state's first income tax on dividends paid by Oklahoma-based corporations. At the bill-signing ceremony, Governor Hall handed Troy the pen and remarked, "This is your program." Troy's most passionate cause is education. Says he: "Everything Oklahoma hopes to be is bound up in the classrooms." Partly because of his constant needling, the legislature has doubled textbook funds, reduced the state's ratio of pupils to teachers and more than tripled special classes for students who are backward, physically handicapped or gifted.

One of eleven children, Troy, 40 (whose real first name is Forrest), grew up in the poor, populist-leaning "Little Dixie" section of southeastern Oklahoma. He dropped out of college to become a newsman. After 17 years of experience, including two stints as the Tulsa Tribune's Washington bureau chief, Troy quit in 1970 and bought the Observer from a priest, who had earlier taken it over from its founder, the Oklahoma City Roman Catholic diocese. Troy readily paid the asking price of $1 for the money-losing enterprise.

Alternative Voice. The short, wiry Troy runs the Observer from an old red brick bungalow in Oklahoma City, three blocks from the capitol. Though he prints a few articles from unpaid contributors, he fills most of the twelve-page paper himself. His wife (and co-publisher) Helen keeps the books and stuffs papers into mailing envelopes at their modest suburban home. He often warns subscribers to "worry about a newspaper when it earns enough for the publisher to join the country club." That is not something that Troy's readers need fear. The Observer lost $18,000 during his first year, finally edged $9,800 into the black in 1973. Troy makes no effort to solicit advertisers, and sometimes bites those few who feed him; two utility companies, among the paper's largest accounts, pulled out after Troy editorially championed a statutory limit on the industry's advertising. He supplements his income by lecturing to civic groups and his talks are part of his crusade for reform. "You want to make a difference," he tells audiences. "Otherwise you are just taking up space."

Troy describes himself as "hopelessly independent," and shuns political ideology in his columns. As an "alternative voice" in a conservative area, he is regularly on the liberal counterattack. But he is a believer in private enterprise, an occasional defender of President Nixon, both before and after Watergate, and a fan of Evangelist Oral Roberts. Troy scorns the "kept" press in his state. "It reacts to the jingle of the cash register," he charges. "I'd be out of business if the other papers were doing their job." Few of Troy's friends--and none of his enemies--think that the iconoclastic editor would acknowledge that situation, even if it ever came true.

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