Second: I left the paper this fall (voluntarily) because on so many levels, the paper has failed itself, its readers, its legacy and its future.

Wait: how can it fail its future when the future hasn’t happened yet? Because TDMN’s leadership is either so myopic and/or so protectionist that it can’t make the proper decisions to move the business forward.

One way to sum it up: a journalistic organization can’t be operated using the traditional corporate business model for a number of reasons, from the intangibility of the core product to the ethics, creativity and discipline needed to produce a good product. Yet since the late 1990s – more than incidentally the first time Belo stock peaked at a juicy, about-to-burst price – the company’s primary goal has gradually shifted away from supplying quality contemporary journalism to pleasing board members, stockholders and the local elite.

In other words, the price became more important than the product. That, folks, spells doom for most common consumer goods, from cars and CDs to cell phones and chewing gum. And it typically grinds the progression of a product to a screeching, lurching, bolt- and weld-loosening halt.

I was among the trendsetters at the paper. I can do more than one thing well at that level; I’m skilled at copy editing, line editing, idea generation, fact-checking, reporting, writing and criticism in both print and online. I did things no one else in the country had tried before, and I was successful with them. I was one of the most productive staffers in my department.

But they lost me, and I’m likely going to leave journalism. Why? Because I – very much like the immense pool of both veteran and young talent that TDMN used to attract and had within its walls just a few years ago – was not appreciated properly. I was meat, not talent. I was ballast, not part of the crew. I was a small gear in a huge engine room of a ship that can only move at a crawl, that takes forever to change direction, that’s now dealing with choppy seas … and that’s got several worsening leaks in its hull.

Damn the torpedoes, my arse. I hate swimming, much less drowning.

We’ll have a paper for a while in Dallas. But it won’t be worth much unless its either repaired – and the only way that’ll happen is if its ownership changes – or replaced. I’d bet money on the latter more than the former at this point.

the general public may not notice, but I do. I’ve noticed in several online stories published by reputable companies numerous misspellings. is that the lack of copy editors or an over reliance on spellcheck?

Belo didn’t break out individual papers in their latest earnings report, but my guess is that the DMN is still cash flow positive or close to it. But Belo’s balance sheet is short on cash and they are clearly vulnerable to running out of cash/being unable to borrow in this debt crisis.

As to R and Kent’s comments, I could not agree more. DMN’s not so great online operation is either losing money or barely breaking even, ignoring the huge subsidy from the print edition. DMN going online only is not going to happen.

I think the DMN online should put the wall up and go subscriber only for articles and let some teaser content and the blogs remain free to the public. Who buys what they can get for free?

Not until someone comes up with a way to aggregate content in a subscription form – much like you do with your DirecTV – will an online-only scenario work. Pegasus News comes the closest to that idea now.

But if you could go to a Web site, pick what you wanted to see on your front page of that site every day, then sure, eventually it could potentially become profitable. Especially if you did an online daily, and then a print monthly or weekly, perhaps.

But everyone would have to think outside the box, and not be so quick to shoot the idea down.

Decherd will be riding this one right into the ground. He’s the Rick Waggoner of local media.

I cover DISD for the DMN. When DISD fired hundreds of teachers recently, our coverage on our DISD blog topped 160,000 page views at the height of the crisis. For a niche blog, those are outstanding weekly numbers.

Tawnell Hobbs and I each worked like crazy that week, easily logging 100 working hours between the two of us. The effort caught the attention of several new media types who cited it as one of the best examples anywhere of how reporters should function in the digital world. (ex: http://www.newsless.org/2008/12/beat-blogging-101/)

Yet … because the DMN generates about $3.50 in online ad revenue for every 1,000 page views, it’s fair to say that our on-line reporting during the crisis brought in about $560 in weekly advertising revenue –- which works out to roughly $5.60 an hour, for two reporters.

I love journalism, and I hope to do it for years to come. But $2.80 an hour is laughable. Online doesn’t come close to paying the bills.