D

Express-News Undercut by Front-Page Ad

I have no particular objection to running unobtrusive front-page ads on newspapers. I’d prefer that they remain confined to a small strip across the bottom, but I know that with some papers trying anything and everything to remain afloat, there’s going to be experimentation. The local Star Community Newspapers group has even been floating ads in the center of the front page, above the fold and surrounded by content.

But can we all agree that today’s San Antonio Express-News front is just awful? Maybe papers should set some sort of guideline. Something that says ads will be omitted from the front when they’re running a two-line, six-column head?  Or when the lead story has a major body count?

Doc Gallagher Has History With Financial Regulators

Sorry we didn’t have this up last week, before “Doc” Gallagher was one of the featured speakers at the Jewish Community Center of Dallas’ Senior Expo.

But if you saw him there, or you’re planning to attend one of his free sessions this month at Sonny Bryan’s in Richardson, Golden Corral in North Richland Hills, or the Highland Park Cafeteria in Dallas, you might want to check out this piece from the latest D CEO.

One aspect of the story that didn’t make it into the final piece, because of space considerations, is that much of the marketing of “the Money Doctor” (who buys time weekly Saturday mornings on KAAM-AM 770) is aimed at senior citizens. He’s appeared on the cover of Mature Texan (with Ebby Halliday), for instance. And he’s done  shows on topics like the dangers of nursing homes, in addition to warning his listeners about the dangers of working with “Big Broker.”

He’s absolutely right that you’ve got to be careful from whom you take financial advice.

Great Interview With Former DMN Photographer Damon Winter

You may remember New York Times photographer Damon Winter’s work from his shots of President Obama during the campaign. (They did win Winter a Pulitzer after all.) I didn’t know until I read his interview with the blog Too Much Chocolate that he actually got his start at the Dallas Morning News. Worth a read — unless you’ve already checked it out, which is possible, since I’ve seen this link retweeted about 50 times today.

Texas Tribune Launches (Yawn)

It is unfair to review a restaurant the day it opens, and the same applies to new platforms in journalism.  But today’s unveiling of the state-wide news site headquartered in Austin confirms some of my suspicions about the concept. To sum it up: I don’t care about El Paso or Tyler or most of what else goes on in the state. That’s why I don’t stay umbillically attached all day to the Texas AP wire. And that’s why at first glance this new boy on the block leaves me unimpressed.

(more…)

Emily Ramshaw Hearts FrontBurner

The Texas Tribune launched today. I’m sure all you political wonks have already bookmarked it. An alert FBvian pointed out to me that former DMNer Emily Ramshaw lists among her favorite blogs our humble outpost here. We’re tickled. Just as tickled as we are by the clear homage that Evan Smith has paid to D Magazine with the artwork that accompanies one of their first lead stories. On the left, the first issue of D Magazine, in 1974. On the right, the Texas Tribune. (Yeah, yeah. I know. We weren’t the first to do it. Just funnin’.)

A.H. Belo Again Posts Positive Numbers, Ctd.

Even the News’s own headline writers follow the herd in missing the story about A.H. Belo’s quarterly results. The headline is correct but wrong — that is, it’s wrong if a headline is supposed to convey the real news in a story.

The real news is this: Belo’s newspapers — after years of misreading the media revolution, after a year of a freefall in advertising revenue, and after a desperate bid to stay in business by slashing costs — have stabilized. They have come up with a publishing model that works.

Here’s Daniel Gross over on Slate.com on how the model works. The key, as I have been saying for three years, is this:

But newspapers aren’t continuing to spend money as if it’s 2003 and hoping that Craigslist will disappear. No, they’re planning for survival by slashing costs sharply, trying to boost online advertising, and, here’s the clincher, making people pay more for the product. Print media is now in the process (belated, in my opinion) of finding a second large, potentially more stable, revenue base in addition to ads: subscriptions. The New York Times and many other papers have increased the price of the paper at the newsstand and for home delivery. When you raise the price of a product, you’re likely to lose a portion of your customer base. And while no newspaper likes to shed readers, some of the shrinkage in circulation is by design. If raising subscription costs by 11 percent causes 10 percent of customers to flee, a newspaper will find that its circulation revenues are stable while it saves a lot of money by manufacturing a smaller number of newspapers.

Knives Come Out for Texas Trib Launch

I am a proud founding member of the new Texas Tribune, the online state news service that starts up on Tuesday. I know FrontBurner looks forward to stealing a lot of their material while the ink is still fresh on the server. But some are not so happy, as this Austin Chronicle appraisal makes plain. I was especially interested to see that Evan Smith enjoys a higher salary than I do.  But then again, he’s Evan Smith and I’m not.

Least Surprising Photo Ever? Tim Rogers Lectures the Staff About Word Usage

The topic: "blond" vs. "blonde." The book: Garner's Modern American Usage, a copy of which was recently purchased for the office for just such an occasion. The pedantic person reading from it, and thus extending the conversation for far too long: Tim Rogers.

A.H. Belo Again Posts Positive Numbers

I’ve already complained about how the financial press reports corporate results. Again, A.H. Belo showed a negative net income (-$5.8 million), which will be the headline, and a positive operating profit (+$14.4 million), which will  barely be mentioned.  The market, at least, knows how to read the data, driving the stock price up 21% so far today. This reflects a new confidence in management’s turnaround strategy, which entails cutting circulation and raising prices, a move that drove a 11.8% increase in circ revenue this quarter. Nobody is of the woods yet, but that’s a healthy number.

InsideCorner, R.I.P.

It really was magic. When we launched InsideCorner at the beginning of the baseball season, it was an opportunistic move made possible by the Morning News‘ shortsightedness. They had on their staff the best baseball beat writer in Texas, Evan Grant, and they decided to make him cover football (a move forced by their content-sharing agreement with the Star-Telegram). So, with the support of some visionary advertisers (Dr Pepper, Pappas Bros., Texas Rangers), we were able to make a home for Evan in our humble digital outpost. You know what happened after that: the Rangers had one of their best seasons in club history as a direct result of Evan’s comprehensive, insightful coverage (along with the fine work of Mike Hindman and Jeff Miller, it should be noted). Then, at the end of the baseball season, the News got its shortsighted vision corrected by ESPN and hired Evan back.

Meantime, we’d brought along some other writers to round out the coverage on InsideCorner, most notably Bob Sturm, he of Ticket fame. Bob broke down the Cowboys for us in the way that only he can. And Gina Miller of TXA 21 has been pitching in on the Mavs front. Zac and Eric threw up a few posts, too, from beyond the arc.

Here’s what we struggled with: we had this great baseball blog run by a full-time employee whose job was to feed and care for the thing more or less around the clock. Then we had this parentless sports blog that was getting passed around from babysitter to babysitter, each of whom gave the thing good care when they had the time but each of whom also had a full-time job (in Zac’s case, keeping Twitter in business; in Eric’s case, breaking necks and cashing checks; in Bob’s case, mediating on-air fights between his broadcasting partner and his producer on BaD Radio; in Gina’s case, keeping Derek Harper’s six-button suits in check on Mavs broadcasts; in Mike Hindman’s case, lawyering; in Jeff Miller’s case, writing books). This is no way to raise a child. A kid needs stability. Rules. An engaged parent.

So. We’ve decided to give our baby to a better home. Or, more accurately, we’ve decided to put the baby down. And not just for nap.

On Monday, we’re pulling the plug on InsideCorner. Its content will still live on the interubes should you ever want to search for a bit of information you remember reading, but there won’t be any links to it on our site. Thank you to everyone who was a part of the magic while it lasted. Thank you especially for your forbearance as we’ve figured out the right course of action.

God bless us all.

KERA Seeks CFO Who’s Fun to be With

Also at last night’s World Affairs Council event, I ran into Mary Anne Alhadeff, the CEO of North Texas Public Broadcasting. She said she and her team are super-excited about the launch of their new radio station, KXT (91.7 FM), on Nov. 9.

But she had some disappointing news to share. The company’s CFO, Jason Daisey — whom I had the privilege of meeting in the course of reporting a story in the latest D CEO — had just left to move back east. She tried to convince him that he should stay to see the new station launched. But he said that for him closing the financial transaction that allowed KERA to purchase the new frequency earlier this year was the exciting part, “like the Super Bowl.”

Be warned, potential chief financial officers: you’ve got some big shoes to fill. According to Alhadeff, it’s difficult to find a numbers guy who is as much fun as Daisey was.

Leading Off (10/30/09)

1. The Highland Park Town Council doesn’t need any of your fancy studies, any of your new-fangled objective measures, or your pointy-headed cost-benefit analysis. They know the truth: Even looking at the possibility of maybe someday thinking about eventually enacting some sort of voluntary conservation ordinance to preserve houses in one of this area’s most historic neighborhoods, that alone will cause home values to plummet. Former Mayor Gifford Touchstone says so, and his word is good enough for them.

2. Dallas Police may need to review the finer points of the Lock, Take, Hide program after a SWAT supervisor’s vehicle was burgled. In related news, D CEO executive editor Glenn Hunter will no longer drive down North Fitzhugh Avenue.

3. Dallas attorney Ralph Janvey, the court-appointed receiver in the R. Allen Stanford case, is looking to recover $1.5 billion for defrauded investors. The lawyer for the investors says Janvey’s plan is “something of a fantasy.” Discussion topic: Is it more or less of a fantasy than seeing a fleet of electric cars on the roads of North Texas next year?

Gerry Fraley Back at SportsDay

In case you missed it — and you probably did, since the Dallas Morning News has always treated him like a Hawaiian-shirt-favoring stepchild — Gerry Fraley is back with the paper, after three years or so filing copy in St. Louis. Always enjoyed his work, so it’s good to see him back.

Pegasus News to Become Wired Local

I’ve done an atrocious job of following up on my post revealing that Pegasus News is soon set for its relaunch. I failed to check in to see if they posted a response, which they did last week.

So if you’re a devoted reader of Pegasus News, then the headline on this post isn’t news at all. The new name will be Wired Local.

Look, I was in on some of the early discussions when another hyperlocal site in town was planning a name change. There were a lot of bad ideas floating around the room. I mean really, really, really bad. And you can see for yourself what they settled on (after I’d left the company.) But, lord knows, I didn’t have any brilliant ideas of my own at the time.  Coming up with the right name is tough. Particularly when you have expansion to other markets in mind.

And that’s where the trouble comes. (more…)

News Circ Down 22% — and That’s Good News

A FrontBurnervian alerts me to this Editor & Publisher circulation report, which shows the News down big-time. Why do I think that’s good news? If you raise prices 30-40% and lose 22% of your subscribers as a result, you’ve gained. The old model was to do whatever poissible to get readers in order to charge advertisers more. The new model is to make money on circulation, serve fewer readers, and deliver a core, committed audience to advertisers. The News is doing what it needs to do.

Williams: Obama War on FOX News is “Un-American”

You might call journalist Juan Williams the man in the middle. A correspondent for both the FOX News Channel and National Public Radio, he’s said to be distrusted by some at NPR because of the Fox connection. And he says while he’s seen by black viewers as “the conservative on Fox,” white viewers consider him the network’s liberal. But, “I’m not beholden to any one ideology,” Williams said yesterday during a luncheon Q&A at the Belo Mansion. The problem is that “nobody in Washington ever acknowledges that the other side is right, because they’re all getting paid by people to stay on one side of the fence. So we have a fragmented media world.” The Belo audience was an eclectic bunch–Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, local GOP honcho Jonathan Neerman–and they got their money’s worth from Williams (pictured in this photo by Lisa A. Street). Answering questions posed by John Goodman, president and CEO of the right-leaning National Center for Policy Analysis, the veteran correspondent took on the Obama White House, CNN, teachers unions, and Republicans who dragged their feet in the health care debate. Jump for the highlights.

(more…)

Pegasus News to Relaunch With New Name Dec. 1

The managing editor of Pegasus News, Sarah Blaskovich, told me last night that the much-anticipated relaunch of Pegasus News will happen by December 1. She said the site’s staff is furiously working to get the new design up and running, and to expect a soft launch shortly before that date.

The new look and new features will also come with an entirely new name. She wouldn’t tell me what that was, but indicated that it will be something less Dallas-centric than “Pegasus.” Gap Broadcasting purchased the site in January, and their plan is to introduce sites like Pegasus into markets where they already have radio stations (Gap owns 116 around the country). The new name will be something that can be plugged into any market. I asked Sarah if they felt any consternation at having to give up on any brand power that “Pegasus” has gained in the last three years, and she said they do feel like they’ll be starting over in Dallas from that standpoint.

Dallas is by far the largest city on Gap’s map. Pegasus founder Mike Orren has previously said that Shreveport, Tyler, and Yakima (Washington), would be the first of the new markets. Staff in Shreveport has already been hired, and it will be the first to come with the relaunch, according to Sarah. Tyler will be next.

My question: Does a small market like Tyler need a map of drink specials?

Will Print Media Survive, Ctd.

Community newspapers, like our own People Newspapers, will be delivered to your front lawn long after metro papers like the Morning News go entirely to some form–which, I’m guessing, hasn’t exactly been invented yet–of electronic delivery.

Hyper-local publications are counting on “refrigerator journalism” to keep the presses running. Half the job of putting together a neighborhood paper is making sure you’re running enough photos of cute kids and puppy dogs to keep parents cutting out articles to hang on the fridge.

But the new-fangled hyper-local blogging media is cribbing from that playbook. Witness the Junior Reporters’ Program at Roseland After School Academy, run by Shawn Williams of the Dallas South News site. These videos provide the frightening evidence: An army of cute kids outfitted with probing questions with which to prod sources? They’re coming for you, Park Cities People.

Glenn Hunter Digs Downtown Dallas

On this beautiful afternoon, the D CEO crew ventured out to eat at Seventeen Seventeen at the Dallas Museum of Art. The cost was about three times greater than our meal at Harwood 609, but the quality was oh, let’s say seventeen times as good.

As Glenn is demonstrating in this photo, we’re loving life downtown.

One note to the management of Seventeen Seventeen: I don’t know who this “Stephen Pyles” is that you list as a consulting chef on your menu, but folks might get him confused with the guy down the street.

(more…)

Plano: Only Mustard Acceptable on Corn Dogs

Apparently FrontBurner isn’t alone in having a slow day following the action-packed Arts Center/Texas-OU/Komen Race/State Fair weekend. The Plano Star-Courier wants you to know that Plano city leaders definitively prefer mustard on their corn dogs.

I can tolerate the taste of mustard, but prefer not to have it in my mouth. So I’ve always been a ketchup man. Does that give me away as a non-native Texan?

It’s not what the article is really about, but Malcolm Gladwell’s ketchup piece from the New Yorker in 2004 establishes firmly why the tomato-based condiment (at least in the form perfected by Heinz)  is objectively superior to mustard.

Forbes: “Recession-Proof” Dallas-Fort Worth a Good Place to Retire In?

Listmania seems to have finally gotten to Forbes.  According to this one, Dallas-Fort Worth is the second best “recession-proof” city to retire in. Atlanta is first, Tampa is third, Houston is fourth, and Austin and St. Louis (St. Louis?) are tied for fifth.

First, I question the use of the term “recession-proof.” Dallas may have been hit less dramatically than some other metro areas, but that hardly means we haven’t been hit at all. 

Secondly, and more confoundingly, if I’m retired, why do I care whether my city is suffering a recession?  I mean, I’m retired, right? The national recession may affect my stocks, bonds, and real estate assets, but what has that got to do with where I live? If anything, doesn’t it mean there are more people are available to mow my lawn?  Wouldn’t it drive labor and other costs down? In other words, wouldn’t a retired person rather live in a city that is experiencing a recession?

Allen Hockey Team Begins Play Saturday

Allen has a minor league hockey team? And they have ice angels all their own?

They’re called the Allen Americans, the Central Hockey League affiliate of the Dallas Stars. Once upon a time I was the editor of the Allen American. I wonder if the newspaper’s parent company, Star Community Newspapers, is happy to have their name co-opted. I’m guessing they are.

Fox4’s Richard Ray Takes on the Willingham Case

Fox4 deserves a Thumbs Up for taking 5:39 minutes on Tuesday — a huge amount of time in a nightly newscast — to examine the Willingham case. Although he provides no new information. Ray obviously tilts to the seemingly unanimous opinion in Corsicana that Willingham was guilty, and so I found his report informative. I remain sceptical of the jury verdict and deeply suspicious of the reasons Rick Perry panicked at the idea of an honest airing of the evidence pro and con.  Be that as it may, in devoting so much valuable airtime to the story, Fox4 did a public service. Here’s the segment:

More Media Love For Craig Watkins

The Dallas County district attorney is named one of 27 “Brave Thinkers” in the November issue of The Atlantic. The whole list is here.

Pssst … Don’t Tell Anyone, But Yesterday Was Columbus Day

SweetCharity tells me it’s a “Yankee holiday,” and other native Texans say it was never that big a deal in schools here anyway. Still, the utter void of local news or notice about Columbus Day–it was yesterday, by the way–is striking to anyone who grew up thinking of the holiday as sort of important in our country’s history. As usual you can blame the blackout on the gods and goddesses of PC, who’ve cowed everybody into thinking the West’s “discovery” of the Americas was somehow evil. To these multiculturalists and their minions all I can say is: “Happy belated Columbus Day!”