Last Thursday, when I picked up a copy of the Dallas Observer, I was nonplussed by its cover story, which was about a guy in Scottsdale, Arizona, who buys art at estate sales and the like and resells it. The story itself was fine enough, but I kept waiting for it to have something — anything — to do with Dallas. It didn’t. The story reminded me of the cover story from a few weeks back about the financial collapse, which also had nothing to do with Dallas (well, not directly, at least). I asked the paper’s managing editor, Patrick Williams, what was going on. The paper is owned by Village Voice Media, formerly New Times, based in Phoenix. I know that in the past, the folks in Phoenix have dictated that certain stories run chain-wide. I asked Williams if that same sort of direction had resulted in these non-Dallas stories. Williams said:
This year the chain began producing national features for all the papers to use as they see fit. Both of those were national stories, the bank one from the Village Voice and the art picker from Phoenix. We also occasionally share stories with a statewide bent with the Houston Press. So far this year, we’ve produced one national feature ourselves: Megan Feldman’s piece from early in the year about that state of deserters seeking asylum in Canada.
Obviously we’d be all local all the time if we could, but the economy being what it is we’re determined to make the best use of the resources we have available, and since we have some great writers across the chain, this seems a natural way to go about it.
The decision on which national features we run is still made locally, though the big bosses decide which stories qualify as nationals.
As I told Williams, saving money like that makes sense. I’d do it, too, if I could — when it made sense. But the current art picker cover story doesn’t strike me as national. I think this “making the best use of resources” comes off awkwardly sometimes. The city’s media diet is more well-rounded when the Observer puts Dallas stories on its cover every week. There’s certainly enough to write about in the city.
They usually don’t ask my opinion at the Observer before they choose what goes on the cover, but if they had, this week I would have picked one of two stories for the cover before I picked the one out of Scottsdale: Jim Schutze’s column about how the Trinity Project could prove a boon for plaintiff’s lawyers, or Pete Freedman’s music story about the first band in the city to claim it plays music that embodies “the Dallas sound.” Both are more germane to Dallas. As for the Scottsdale story, if I had to run it to save money, I would have buried it.
26 comments
If my company was regularly scooped by a weekly city guide, then I would write this, too. Since when did the D.O. become more powerful than DMN?
Tim, this is a weak counter attack against the Observer’s very good and very prolific blogs. Let’s put things into perspective, shall we?
The D.O.’s paper version is a more or less an advertising vehicle and most of their local meat is online. They post regularly on weekends, they have a sports blog, they have a music blog (that’s “arts” – D’s domain – so give Crain the outlet he wants). Oh, and wow. They don’t have 2 FT business reporters, but I read more biz news than I do on your domains. And by business news news, I mean something other than your auto dealers and restaurants.
Ouch. I believe Kari’s comment is known, in Internet lingo, as pwnage.
LOOK AT ME! I KNOW HOW TO USE NONPLUSSED CORRECTLY!
Kari: I assure you, if we wanted to make a counter attack against Unfair Park, we would do so in a much less obvious way — http://bit.ly/2nBE7p (see No. 1) — than this.
I have to disagree with Kari:
I can’t get enough of botoxed trophy wives, their cloths, what party they go to and their closets. Who needs to read about the rest of the world outside the bubble?
You guys, I hate to go off-topic, but I couldn’t find another place to post it (maybe in Leading Off?). Anyway, it’s come to my attention that someone has lost an old, generic, partly misspelled critique. If you see it, let me know. Not worth much, except in sentimental value.
Pow pow!
@Kari: Just to set a few things straight: I never said the DO was more powerful than the DMN. I didn’t say anything about the DO’s blogs (which are, yes, very good). And we don’t have two full-time business reporters (we have three editors (technically more like 2.5) who put out a business magazine that requires most of their time).
@Gwyon: Thanks for the acknowledgment. I always try to use words correctly.
@Grumpy Demo: You’re playing to a tired stereotype. Yes, we publish pictures taken at parties. But you clearly don’t read our magazine. We recently dedicated our entire feature well (as just one example) to the Arts District, which, I believe, was not built in the Park Cities.
An Arts District feature? That’s your example of not pandering to the Park Cities crowd? Sorry, I’m just a little nonplussed over here.
Pandering to your target demo is kind of the point isn’t it? I’m not part of the D crowd, but I do understand that it is a business. They make no bones about the fact that the average household income of the magazine is one gazillion dollars a year and charge advertisers to reach that group.
I still don’t know how they come up with that income number.
Thanks for the article. I, too, have wondered what has been going on with the DO over the last year. The lackluster cover stories, the reduction of reader’s letters, the incredible thinning of the print product, and the change in distribution (trying to get a copy on Thursday in Collin County is difficult) has reduced it from a “must read” to “I’ll read it when I have time” publication. Save for their excellent coverage of the Hill trial, this has been a C+ print product for the last 6 months.
I care more about D’s cover choices than D.O.’s because the former puts more local energy into dead trees than the latter. I rarely read the D.O. paper, but I read the blogs several times a day because they are timely and meaty – even if some stories are yellow. I read D monthly, but I only occasionally read their blogs because they have less and less fresh information. They lack the energy of a year ago and there’s a lack of opinion. Like you indicated, TR, D’s energy is in dead trees, not 1’s and O’s. Clearly, your print product is superior.
I see you made a call to the D.O. about their cover choices. Have you called the Dallas Morning News to ask them about their recent business choices? That’s bigger news to me.
Daniel, you write “An Arts District feature? That’s your example of not pandering to the Park Cities crowd?”
Allow me to come to D’s defense on this one, arguably not my strong suit. The issue devoted to the Arts District was, um, about the Arts District. That’s the opera house, the symphony house, the theater house, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher sculpture center. Those buildings, those institutions, cater to the whole city of Dallas, but more, they cater to the entire North Texas region.
D’s issue included commentary about how there simply must be more people living and working in the Arts District area, more affordable housing, etc., for it to become a viable, livable part of downtown.
Highland Park has fewer than 10,000 residents; University Park, 25,000. Dallas, on the other hand, has an estimated population of 1.2 million, 45,000 of whom showed up on Sunday, October 18 for free tours inaugurating the new buildings.
Believe me, the long lines waiting to get into the various venues were not filled with HP bluebloods, and the day in-day out theater goers and opera goers and art lovers who regularly fill our cultural meccas are NOT drawn from the paltry 35,000 denizens of “the bubble.”
In short, D’s Arts District issue pandered to anybody who gives a damn about the Arts District, and that’s people all over town.
@Pee-U: You make astute observations that do not nonpluss me. Right, we make money selling print ads (still). We make some change selling online ads. So we put our resources where the revenue is. Meaning: we D Mag editors have as a priority our magazines. We blog as a hobby (as it were).
I am typing this while grilling my family’s dinner because I love this blog, not because it pays my salary.
@Michael: Our average reader household income is just north of $328,000. We’ve gotten that data over the years (or near that) from more than one outside audit firm. I’ll give you the name of our current firm tomorrow.
Tim
Why are you so insecure with yourself that you feel the need to censor even the most
generic question. If you are so content in your rich bubble, why not allow for other points of view?
I wonder how many comments you deleted just today in order to make you look better.
I don’t want to piss anyone off… I simply want to say… I was here.
@Jack E Jett: Please don’t think that I’m trying to show that by approving your comment I’ve demonstrated that we approve every comment that doesn’t agree with D Magazine’s position. Because we don’t and I’m not.
Again, if we choose not to publish a comment, that is not censorship; it is editing. That’s what editors do. I’ve published your comment to give me the excuse to say again: we allow comments that advance the discussion. Or that are entertaining. Or that we simply think make this blog a better place to visit.
Dissent? Great. But do it in a way that you would at a great dinner party. So that it makes everyone glad he sat at the table — smarter, more engaged, with a smile on his face.
My post about the DO covers wasn’t about me. If you have something to say about the topic at hand, please offer it up. As an editor, I’m happy to pass along your thoughts to our audience.
TR – going after The Observer’s cover stories is a no-win for D. You’ll lob a charge of poor their decision making and gadfly bloggers may insinuate that a cover story of a year ago was payback unpaid bills, which I know is not true.
Regardless, I don’t see how the Observer’s choice of newspaper covers are interesting to your $300k+ audience. Sure, a lot of marcomm and media folks are your audience, but are they more interested in the choices of The Observer’s blogs, which carry a lot of weight, or their free weekly?
Bottom line: I’m not sure why you went to the trouble of investigating and posting your findings when The Observer’s paper is not that important to your audience, The Observer is not your competitor (right?) and its blogs have become more prominent than dead trees.
Your actions do not compute especially when there are more interesting things going on in local media that only have the viewpoint from The Dallas Observer.
Respectively,
Me
I was also lost with the two covers on DO.I was trying to tie the stories into Dallas and could not so I skip them and moved to something I knew.
@Pee-U: Our print readership and the folk who read this blog are two different audiences. I suspect a Venn diagram would show some overlap of the two, but not much (just a hunch; I’ve got no hard demo data on our online audience). In any case, why would you think that someone with a high household income wouldn’t be interested in how local media make editorial decisions? It’s not like you have to give up being curious once you hit a certain tax bracket.
Tim – I’m not questioning your number and I don’t care about the name of the audit firm. I was just interested in “how could anyone even know that” – I’m guessing if it is an audit firm that it is probably a phone survey, as in the back of my head I seem to recall getting such a call from Guns and Gardens or Western Livestock Journal or some such publication.
@Michael: Our firm is Circulation Verification Council. And your guess is right. CVC makes phone calls. For our recent study, they interviewed 684 readers of D Magazine.
More numbers for your eyes: our average circulation is 65,537. With an average of 6.45 readers per copy, that gives us a readership every month of 422,713.
Yeah, I read this blog and I’m not part of the print-product target demo. I make “just north” of $4,327,981,012.79 a year. I have my print-product needs hand-embossed by oppressed foreign children on archival papyrus. 973 Best Docors in Dallas? I made the 973 Best Doctors in Dallas. I made them; and I can break them [snap!] just like that.
As for those who corrected me, you are correct. I don’t begrudge D Magazine its enviable target demo; I’m as thrilled as the next Dallasite about the Arts District — I’m not Jim Schutze over here, I don’t consider it a mere bauble for the wealthy — but “IJS.”
6.45 readers a copy? D must reach lots of large families along Preston Road!
I think you are off topic Tim. IJS
D Magazine, Dallas Observer, really I think we’re all missing the elephant in the room…The UTA Shorthorn’s total lack of coverage of the Dallas Arts District, art dealers in Arizona, the best doctors in Dallas, and people who make 4,327,981,012.79 a year.