Flash is currently in Armenia and it seems like he’s having a hard time with our work exposing him. We can’t help but notice in the small portions of his ranting that we actually read, he no longer mentions K&M Steam Cleaning by name, the company that might still employ him. We hope that David is okay. Spending this much time obsessing over a hobby website while traveling overseas seems unhealthy. 3,867 words, 23,955 characters. The guy is a relentless jerk who spends thousands of hours attacking people unfairly, and then freaks out when other pay attention and expose him.
The text of the first post:
There’s a guy in Fort Davis, Texas, named Jake Knobloch who has apparently made obsessing about me a significant part of his life.
And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why.
I’ve never met the man. We’ve never had a personal relationship. Yet he has spent an extraordinary amount of time over the past year publishing attacks against me, my journalism, my businesses, my colleagues and even my family.
I’d estimate he’s devoted somewhere between 500 and 1,000 hours to this obsession. That’s just my guess, but considering the sheer volume of material he’s produced, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Oh, and he’s also the chairman-elect of the Jeff Davis County Republican Party.
That’s right. A man preparing to lead a county political party has apparently decided that obsessing over a journalist he’s never met is a worthwhile use of his time.
I have no problem with Republicans. I have no problem with Democrats. I’ve criticized politicians from both parties, and I’ve supported people from both parties.
But I do find it remarkable that someone preparing to represent a political organization would devote so much energy to a personal campaign against a journalist who has reported critically on government officials in that same county.
I’m not suggesting the Republican Party directed any of this. I have no evidence of that.
But I do think his public behavior raises legitimate questions about his judgment and priorities.
And now he’s showing up in the comments on Williamson Reporter.
Not on an investigative story. Not on an article about Jeff Davis County.
On a post about how I prefer celebrating communities rather than exploiting people’s tragedies for Facebook engagement.
The post included a lovely message from a gentleman who recognized some of my photographs of Taylor, Texas. He remembered the old radio station, businesses that had come and gone and three different locations where H-E-B had operated. He said my pictures made him feel like he was saying hello to a neighbor.
It was a nice little moment.
And there was Jake, bringing up his own mugshot.
Yes, we published his mugshot when he was arrested in Presidio County.
And apparently, he’s still bitter about that.
Here’s what I find particularly ironic.
This is a man who has spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to portray me as a criminal, attacking my credibility and recycling accusations against me arising from my disputes with Jeff Davis County officials.
He has repeatedly attempted to define me by arrests and accusations that I maintain were unjustified.
Yet somehow, when we reported his actual arrest, we were the bad guys.
And here’s the part he conveniently overlooks.
We also published the story when the charges against him were dismissed.
We reported the arrest. We reported the dismissal.
Presidio County itself publicly reported his arrest and published his mugshot on its official Facebook page.
Before I published anything, I made sure the individual identified in the county’s records was actually Jake because the county had misspelled his name.
That’s called verifying information.
When the charges were dismissed, I reported that development, too. I also reached out to the county attorney seeking additional information.
That’s called journalism.
As I understand it, his arrest arose from an encounter at a Border Patrol checkpoint involving a substance authorities apparently questioned. I’ve heard accounts about what happened, but I haven’t independently established the details, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
What I can establish is that he was arrested, the arrest was publicly reported and the charges were subsequently dismissed.
An arrest isn’t a conviction. An accusation isn’t proof of guilt. And a dismissal is important information that readers deserve to know.
Those principles apply to Jake just as much as they apply to me.
But there’s an extraordinary double standard here.
He apparently believes my arrests are legitimate material for an endless campaign to discredit me, while reporting his arrest and subsequent dismissal somehow constitutes wrongdoing.
And unlike Jake, I didn’t create a website devoted to attacking him. I didn’t contact people associated with his employment. I didn’t dig into his family tragedies. I didn’t make him the central focus of my life.
I reported a newsworthy event and its outcome.
And now he’s bringing up his own mugshot in the comments beneath a perfectly pleasant post about photographs of Taylor, Texas.
Nobody was talking about Jake. Nobody was talking about his arrest. Nobody was talking about his mugshot.
He brought it up himself.
That’s what makes this entire situation so bizarre.
Let me explain some of the background.
In Jeff Davis County, I was subjected to approximately 15 investigations, two arrests, criminal accusations, a traffic citation I believe was retaliatory and an extraordinary order signed by the county’s chief executive threatening me with arrest if I approached certain county property.
That order was issued without the due process I believe the Constitution requires. It effectively threatened me with arrest for going near public property, despite my having committed no crime that would justify such a restriction.
I’ve challenged these actions through the legal system and prevailed on significant issues, including a successful habeas challenge to the county-property restriction.
And this isn’t just me telling my side of the story.
The Texas Tribune has reported on what happened. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented my case. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, one of the country’s leading First Amendment scholars, has written about it.
Jake even showed up in the comments on Volokh’s article repeatedly, apparently convinced that other commenters defending me were secretly me.
They weren’t.
There’s an important distinction between my experience and Jake’s.
I maintain that I was targeted by public officials because of my speech and journalism. I’ve challenged those actions in court, and my civil rights litigation has sought to hold officials accountable.
I have no evidence that Jake’s arrest resulted from a comparable campaign of retaliation.
But I’m also not going to accuse him of a crime simply because he was arrested.
That’s precisely the distinction I wish he would recognize.
Meanwhile, Jake created a website devoted to attacking me, using a domain associated with my former publication’s name, Big Bend Times.
I eventually rebranded the publication as Big Bend Reporter, bought other domains and moved on.
He can have the domain. I’ve got journalism to do.
And then there’s his obsession with artificial intelligence.
Jake has published AI-generated caricatures of me while simultaneously dismissing my journalism as “AI slop.”
Seriously?
Yes, I use artificial intelligence. I use it to dictate, transcribe, organize information, assist with research and compose articles.
It’s 2026. Of course I use AI.
But here’s something Jake apparently doesn’t understand.
Using AI to help produce journalism is not the same thing as having AI invent journalism.
I do substantial original reporting. I obtain government records. I communicate with public officials. I investigate misconduct. I review court documents. I verify information. I develop sources. I ask questions that government officials sometimes would rather not answer.
And when I publish a story based on original reporting, the reporting doesn’t somehow become less legitimate because I used technology to help turn my research into a readable article.
Journalists have always used tools. Typewriters gave way to computers. Tape recorders gave way to digital recording. Searchable databases replaced hours of digging through filing cabinets.
AI is another tool.
The facts still matter. The sources still matter. Accuracy still matters. Editorial judgment still matters.
And the person publishing the story is still responsible for every word.
There’s something wonderfully ironic about a man who uses AI to manufacture mocking images of another human being complaining that the same person uses AI to help produce actual journalism.
One of us is using technology to help inform communities.
The other is using it to make caricatures of somebody he’s never met.
I’ll let readers decide which is the more productive use of artificial intelligence.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Jake has contacted people associated with my publications, including part-time contributors, to the point that I removed our staff directory because I didn’t want people helping produce community journalism to become targets of his campaign.
And let’s be clear about something. Texas Reporter, Big Bend Reporter and Williamson Reporter aren’t just me sitting behind a computer.
Other people contribute to these publications. They have their own lives, careers and responsibilities.
They didn’t sign up to become participants in somebody else’s personal feud.
He’s also gone after my employment.
And here’s where it gets particularly bizarre.
He published an article attacking the Austin company where I work. That article included copyrighted material, so I submitted a copyright takedown notice.
The material was removed.
But apparently that wasn’t the end of it.
Instead of moving on, he obtained a photograph of our actual office in Austin and used it to put his article back online.
Here’s the interesting part.
We had only been in that office for about two weeks.
So either Jake himself or somebody else apparently went to the trouble of photographing our new location just to obtain a replacement image for an article attacking my employer.
I don’t know who took the photograph. I do know how recently we’d moved into that office.
And it wasn’t even a particularly good photograph.
Think about the amount of time and effort involved in that.
This is a business that supports a lot of families. Real people work there. They have mortgages, rent, groceries, children and responsibilities.
It’s a multimillion-dollar company that provides services to customers throughout Central Texas.
And here’s somebody hundreds of miles away who has apparently decided that attacking my livelihood is a worthwhile use of his time.
Thankfully, I don’t think he’s particularly effective at it.
But he certainly seems to have time on his hands.
And it isn’t just me he’s criticized.
He’s also attacked the work of other established journalists and publications, including the Big Bend Sentinel and the Texas Tribune.
According to a Tribune journalist I subsequently spoke with, Jake contacted numerous people at the organization about its reporting on me.
Apparently, he wasn’t satisfied with the coverage and wanted other people at the organization to hear his complaints.
Imagine putting that much energy into trying to influence how journalists cover somebody you’ve never even met.
And remember, this is somebody preparing to chair the Jeff Davis County Republican Party.
I would think a county political chairman might have other things to occupy his attention. Voter registration. Community engagement. Candidate recruitment. Public policy. Helping his party articulate its vision for the county.
But apparently David Flash is a subject of considerable interest to him.
And then there’s the stuff about my family.
My little brother, Michael, was killed on Nov. 18, 2011, just eight days after his 19th birthday.
He was my baby brother. I was 14 years older than him. In many ways, I helped raise him.
His death remains one of the most painful experiences of my life.
Jake has published attacks involving my deceased brother and my mother, including an accusation that my mother was responsible for his death.
That accusation is false.
My stepmother killed my brother. She was subsequently acquitted in the criminal proceedings.
And I cannot begin to explain how profoundly ugly it is to drag that tragedy into an online campaign against somebody.
Think about that for a moment.
A man who has never met me decided that my murdered little brother was fair game.
What kind of person does that?
I can handle criticism. I’ve worked in media for decades. I’ve dealt with angry readers, politicians, public officials and people who profoundly disagree with me.
That’s part of the job.
But dragging my dead brother into it?
There are some things decent people simply don’t do.
And here’s what I find especially fascinating.
While all this has been happening, I’ve continued publishing news about the Big Bend region, Williamson County and Texas.
I’ve continued working at a company that has grown substantially during my time there.
I’ve continued photographing communities, investigating government misconduct, publishing public records and telling stories that might otherwise go untold.
I’ve traveled the world.
In fact, I’m writing this from Yerevan, Armenia, my 101st country.
Yesterday I was exploring the Armenian countryside in a chauffeured sedan, visiting historic places and learning more about a culture thousands of miles from home.
And somewhere back in Texas, there’s a man who apparently can’t even let somebody compliment my photographs of Taylor without bringing up his own mugshot.
I mean, seriously.
There’s an entire world out there, Jake.
I’ve visited 101 countries. I’ve met people from all walks of life. I’ve seen extraordinary beauty and extraordinary suffering. I’ve visited places where freedom of the press is far more precarious than it is in the United States.
And after everything I’ve experienced, one of the things I believe more strongly than ever is that life is too short to spend it consumed by hatred of another human being.
Especially somebody you’ve never met.
The thing is, I don’t hate Jake.
I don’t know him well enough to hate him.
I find his behavior bizarre. I find some of his personal attacks cruel. I find the amount of attention he devotes to me genuinely difficult to comprehend.
But I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about Jake Knobloch.
I wake up thinking about the work I need to do, the stories I want to publish, the places I want to visit and the people I care about.
And despite everything that happened in Jeff Davis County, I haven’t stopped doing journalism.
Jake can spend another 500 hours obsessing about me if he wants. Or another 1,000.
It doesn’t change the court records. It doesn’t change the reporting by independent journalists. It doesn’t change what happened to me. And it certainly doesn’t change what I’m going to do tomorrow.
And here’s another thing.
If my publications were irrelevant, if nobody read them, if they didn’t have the ability to influence public conversations and hold powerful people accountable, I seriously doubt anybody would devote this much energy to attacking me.
Big Bend Reporter continues publishing regional news. Texas Reporter reaches a substantial statewide audience. Williamson Reporter covers communities that deserve attention beyond the latest crime report.
We publish stories about local government, public safety, businesses, history, architecture, community events and ordinary people doing interesting things.
We also publish investigations that sometimes make powerful people uncomfortable.
And I intend to keep doing all of it.
I also think there’s a larger issue here.
What does it say about the political culture of a county when someone preparing to lead one of its major political organizations spends so much time personally attacking a journalist who has challenged the conduct of local government officials?
That’s a fair question.
Journalists are supposed to scrutinize government. Political leaders are free to criticize journalists. That’s how the First Amendment works.
But there’s a difference between criticizing a story because you believe it’s inaccurate and devoting an enormous amount of time to attacking the person who published it, contacting people associated with his work, targeting his employment and invoking his family’s most painful tragedy.
People can disagree with my reporting. They can challenge my conclusions. They can point out errors, and when I make one, I have a responsibility to correct it.
What they cannot reasonably expect is that I’ll stop reporting because they’ve decided to make my life unpleasant.
And I genuinely cannot understand the obsession.
Imagine seeing a post about a gentleman enjoying photographs of Taylor, Texas, and thinking, “This is my opportunity to bring up my own mugshot and complain about David Flash.”
Seriously?
The original post wasn’t even about me being mistreated by government officials.
It was about the value of community journalism that celebrates communities.
It was about a man who recognized familiar places in photographs and felt connected to his hometown.
That’s a wonderful thing.
And Jake somehow managed to turn even that into another opportunity to attack me.
There’s an entire world out there.
There are beautiful places to visit. Books to read. People to meet. Communities to appreciate. Things to build. Good work to do.
You don’t have to spend your life thinking about me.
And the irony is that the original post was about exactly that: finding something worthwhile in ordinary life instead of constantly looking for somebody to tear down.
I think I’ll keep photographing little Texas towns, publishing community news, investigating government misconduct, helping grow businesses and exploring the world.
You can keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.
But I have to ask one question.
What on earth did I ever do to you?
Because, seriously, we’ve never even met.
And the second post:
This dude has literally made me his whole personality.
I’m not exaggerating. Look at the screenshots.
Jake Knobloch, the chairman-elect of the Jeff Davis County Republican Party, has apparently decided that the most important thing people should know about him is that he operates a website attacking me.
His Facebook biography actually says:
“I am the publisher of …, a website that exposes David Flash’s BS”
I’ve omitted the website name because I’m certainly not interested in advertising it.
But seriously. He’s made me his whole personality.
Now, you might reasonably wonder why I was looking at this man’s Facebook profile.
I wasn’t looking him up. I don’t follow him. I don’t read his website. I have absolutely no interest in what he does with his days.
I needed to block him.
He’s already blocked from most of my social media pages, but apparently he’d been off Facebook for a while, and I hadn’t realized he wasn’t blocked from Williamson Reporter. I’ve only recently increased activity on that page.
And there he was.
Commenting on a perfectly pleasant post about photographs of Taylor, Texas.
A gentleman had written about how much he appreciated my pictures of his old hometown because they brought back memories. I was explaining how I love using community photography to generate positive engagement instead of constantly publishing crime, tragedy and bad news.
And somehow, Jake found a reason to insert himself into that conversation.
So I blocked him.
But to block somebody on Facebook, you have to visit his profile.
And that’s when I saw his biography.
I’m apparently the defining feature of this man’s public identity.
We’ve never met.
We’ve never had a personal relationship.
I reported critically and truthfully on government officials in Jeff Davis County. I believe those officials retaliated against me through investigations, arrests, attempts to discredit me and restrictions that made me feel unsafe in my own home.
I’ve challenged those actions through the legal system, including a federal civil rights lawsuit.
The Texas Tribune has covered what happened. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented my case. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has written about it.
Apparently, the actions I allege county officials took against me weren’t enough.
Now there’s this guy who has devoted an extraordinary amount of time to attacking me personally.
And here’s something particularly interesting.
His website and his interactions with county officials have actually come up in my federal civil rights litigation.
I’ve raised concerns about certain county officials providing him with information and access to records that I believe weren’t made equally available to other news organizations.
In my view, he’s received favorable treatment from some of the very officials I’m suing.
I’ve also seen public expressions of approval for his website from people associated with county government, including officials involved in the controversy.
I suspect some of those folks appreciate having somebody publishing attacks against a journalist who has challenged their conduct.
That doesn’t establish that anyone directed his activities. But the relationships and access are legitimate subjects of scrutiny.
And what makes the whole thing especially strange is that he’s apparently trying to present himself as some kind of technology professional.
I’ve seen references to something called Uptime Consulting associated with his email domain.
I don’t know what his employment situation is, and frankly, I don’t care.
But I do remember him once publishing speculation about the technology behind my websites.
I recall finding his analysis rather unimpressive.
I’m not going back to read it. I don’t spend my time reading his material.
We do preserve relevant publications and communications because some of this activity has potential significance to my litigation.
But preserving evidence is a very different thing from spending your days following somebody around the internet.
And that brings me back to the Facebook biography.
Imagine making somebody you’ve never met such a central part of how you introduce yourself to the world.
I can’t imagine there’s a Mrs. Knobloch. I don’t know his relationship status, but I genuinely wonder how somebody who appears to devote this much time to another person finds time for dating.
And imagine he meets somebody.
Like people do these days, she’s probably going to check him out on social media.
And what’s she going to find?
My name.
Right there in his Facebook biography.
Naturally, she’s going to ask, “Who’s David Flash?”
And now he has to explain that I’m a guy he’s never met, who lives hundreds of miles away, and that he’s spent an extraordinary amount of time creating a website about me, publishing AI-generated caricatures of me, criticizing my journalism and contacting people associated with my work.
“Did he do something to you?”
“Not personally.”
“Then why is he in your Facebook biography?”
I would genuinely love to hear that explanation.
Because I imagine a perfectly reasonable reaction from somebody getting to know him would be:
“What on earth is going on here?”
This is some of the strangest behavior I’ve encountered.
And I’ve encountered some pretty strange behavior in my life.
I don’t know how many hours he’s devoted to me. My guess would be hundreds, possibly approaching a thousand over the past year.
But whatever the number, it’s a remarkable amount of energy to devote to somebody you’ve never met.
Meanwhile, I just finished an absolutely amazing meal in Yerevan, Armenia, my 101st country.
Yesterday I was exploring the Armenian countryside. I’ve been visiting historic sites, learning about the culture, meeting people and enjoying another extraordinary experience in this enormous, beautiful world.
I help run a multimillion-dollar business. I publish several news outlets. I have books to read, photographs to take, places to visit and stories to tell.
My life is full.
And somewhere back in Fort Davis, Texas, there’s a man who has apparently decided that his dislike of me is important enough to put in the little space Facebook gives him to describe himself.
I genuinely find that sad.
Not because it hurts me.
It doesn’t.
But because there is so much more to life than being consumed by somebody you dislike.
I cannot imagine making another human being, especially one I’ve never even met, the centerpiece of my identity.
And yet here we are.
Jake, there’s an entire world out there.
Find something in it that makes you happy.
Because I’m enjoying the heck out of mine.
Anyway, he’s blocked from Williamson Reporter now, too.
And I’m going back to enjoying Armenia.
