RE: DMN, PHASE II

Okay, we’re here at this ungodly hour because we’re shipping and Tim doesn’t understand the price of shoes for a shopping story (and if you’ve never heard Tim talk fashion, you’ve missed much of the good life) and art has to re-do a graphic about water buckets because none of us is good at math…and then Paul has a story about a Jackie Floyd column that includes a paragraph with just one word–”Poodles.”–and it’s worth spewing your Diet Coke to hear….and Laura is singing…

And we’re all actually doing what magazines and writers are supposed to do, which is to get lost in the work because you like it despite the hours, and have fun. Often too much fun. And hopefully do something of quality.

Which is yet another difference between us and the DMN. For more, here’s a blistering insight from a media-knowing FBvian:

The sadly impaired mid-level editors trying to get out of the DMN now are the people who were the architects of the patchy, jumbled, scrambling-to-find-its-footing small-time sheet it has become. They had the ear of Moroney and what they said was taken for gospel by the TV boy.

You can look it up….All of the tragedy of a plummeting circulation cannot be laid at the feet of the readers….some of whom didn’t exist, anyway.

Kresl (expecting a job in corporate, the rumor goes) and Rodrigue (now out of the loop) teamed up to study a small-town Canadian newspaper 3 years ago and translate its “daily magazine format” into the Dallas News…..

One of the Minneapolis applicants is more professorial than professional and has a really bad habit of stealing ideas from the NYT and trying to make them fit Dallas… He once lectured (while stroking his chin, I’m not kidding!) a roomful of very experienced prize-winning newspaper feature writers that, “In the opening paragraph I like to see what I call the ‘glimpse of wisdom.’ ”

Seriously, if you wrote a novel with these people as characters, an editor would throw it back at you and say, “This crap could never happen. Nobody would hire these mushbrains.” But they do get hired and it does happen.

Consider that two years ago the paper announced it would conduct a nationwide search for the perfect metro editor to replace the alleged Phi Beta Kappa who held the job. The nationwide search for a third-floor boss took the elevator to the second floor when they picked Duane Bray off the sports desk. Not that sports guys aren’t smart enough to run a news desk, but .. well…this used to be a Big City Daily. Sports is planned by a calendar; the news side has a loose schedule because nobody plans shootings, crashes and scandals…Experience helps the paper look smarter, you know?

OK, enough “rant.” Sadly, all the hot air from yours truly will not put DMN Dumpty together again.

Loyal Frontburner Reader With a Devotion to the Treasure That Is The Free Press…

RE: DMN, PHASE II

A much-knowing member of the far-flung FB Nation reports that DMN resumes are also making it down to River City:

You didn’t hear it from me (you did not!), but we’re getting DMN resumes down here in Austin, too. And yeah, the DMN was very chief-heavy, and that was before they fired a bunch of the Indians. I have to think the ratio is approaching 1:1.

RE: DMN, PHASE II

The resume jam at the fax might get a little clarification from this media-watching FBvian, who thinks the DMN may indeed be a little editor-heavy.

I woke up this morning worried about the DMN. I mean, if ten high-profile, important staffers were being quarantined…would the quality of Dallas’ Only Daily be in jeopardy???

So, at lunch I sat down to check it out. The answer: nope. The front page had to go out and buy the top two stories, but they made it into the paper. Viewpoints was still there lamenting the loss of the Dallas Cowboys to Arlington (though they did get a column from asked-to-leave-last-year Ruben Navarrette). SportsDay? Looks like Todd Archer and company were fine with Bob Yates quarantined in an undisclosed location. The Business boys used the AP to fill most of 2&3D (no change there). Finally, James Ragland and company seem to be holding down the fort at Metro (deleted Steve Blow quarantine joke).

All that is to point out that perhaps the problem over at the DMN is not that there are too many staffers, but perhaps there are a few too many middle/senior managers. At some point (maybe a year or two ago), they are going to cut into the quality of the paper by getting rid of the people that produce their content. A few years ago, Belo talked about producing content for a lot of platforms. At this point, it looks more like they are building platforms for a clipping service.