Mayor Tom Leppert had scarcely been accused of making “negative personal attacks” against Harlan Crow–the leader of the forces against a city owned convention-center hotel–when darned if the mayor didn’t go and do it again. The anti-hotel effort is “being pushed by an individual who owns the Hilton Anatole, and it’s unfortunate,” Leppert proclaimed today, addressing DowntownDallas’ jam-packed, 50th Anniversary luncheon at the Hyatt Regency here. He also ripped a union proposal to curb developer incentives–both issues will be on the city ballot May 9–and said “the combination of these two referendums can’t go forward.” After the mayor talked, keynote speaker Catherine Crier scolded everybody for contributing to the economic meltdown, but said good things can come out of it, like growing vegetable gardens and moving back in with your parents. Yeah, meltdown!!!
Today has been rough. We laid off 12 people, representing just under 10 percent of our total workforce (including D Magazine, D Home, D CEO, D Weddings, D Beauty, and People Newspapers). This time, the layoffs came from the magazine side of the operation; the newspapers were not affected.
When we retrenched in November, we made our cuts based on what we thought at the time was a fairly pessimistic view of how the economy would hold up in 2009. Reality has proven that we were actually not pessimistic enough. As our comrades at the Dallas Morning News and Star-Telegram will attest, these are challenging times for publishers. And bankers. And, well, everyone.
As others have mentioned, today we launched a new sports blog called InsideCorner. I won’t be contributing to it, because, as Eric has noted, I’m not a sports fan. But Eric will be over there on a regular basis. So will Zac. And, you know, it’s gonna be hard to keep Wick from sharing his thoughts on the NFL draft. I’m sure.
Forget about all that, though. The big news is that Evan Grant is now in the house. We’re calling him the manager of InsideCorner. (Or is it the InsideCorner? Hmm.) If you follow baseball, you know who Evan is. After he’d covered the Rangers for years (and been named Texas Sportswriter of the Year for his work), the Dallas Morning News tried to move him over to the Cowboys. We simply couldn’t stand by and let that happen. Evan landed in Surprise, Arizona, hours ago. Expect greatness.
Also joining us on InsideCorner (that InsideCorner?) are Mike Hindman and Jeff Miller. Mike pays his bills in the courtroom, but in his spare time, he writes about the ponies and baseball. You might recognize his name from the Newberg Report, Texasrangers.com, and the Dallas Morning News (can’t find a link). Jeff worked at the News for 21 years, where he supervised writers in the sports department. He has written three books and will be working on a fourth when not blogging for InsideCorner.
Welcome aboard, gents.
(P.S. If the site loads slowly, it’s because our server is under attack from China. No joke.)
A memo just went out to all employees from publisher Gary Wortel outlining the cutbacks. There will be pay cuts, and 12 percent of the workforce will be laid off. Full memo after the jump.
1. I know Adam already got to this last night, but I still have a question: what are Ed Werder and his mustache going to do now now that T.O. is going to yell at some other team’s wide receivers coach? I imagine Werder slowly walking, defeated, on the road out of Valley Ranch as this plays.
2. Missed this the other day, but Mark Cuban announced the businesses that are close to receiving his personal stimulus package — which I realize now I probably shouldn’t have worded that way. Especially since one of them is called Naked Pizza.
3. Rod Davis, come back! Frisco needs you! (You can’t have your old cubicle, though. I’ve made some slight modifications.)
