Don’t get defensive. That’s just what Dr. John W. Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, says in the seventh-annual report America’s Most Literate Cities 2010 released today. Yet again, when ranking the 75 top-population cities in the U.S., Miller looked at six “key indicators of literacy,” including the newspaper…
Last we checked in with the Jubilee Parkers fighting the Dallas Independent School District’s attempt to snatch up their homes to make room for a new O.M. Roberts Elementary building, the controversy looked to be finished. State Rep. Eric Johnson intervened on the residents’ behalf, you’ll recall, and shortly thereafter,…
When I spoke with Dallas Morning News publisher and CEO Jim Moroney Wednesday morning about the paper’s forthcoming “‘Subscriber Content’ initiative,” the very first thing he said was that he couldn’t believe someone hadn’t leaked his memo sent to the staff, which he then proceeded to summarize. This morning, the…
Two different announcements have landed in the in-box in the last 24 minutes alerting our attention to the fact the American Institute of Architects has given the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre one of its prestigious Honor Awards for Architecture, along with these other estimable edifices. One release says the…
Clearly, Rick’s Cabaret needs to put the Dallas and Fort Worth mayors on its press-release list. Because in case you missed it — and how could you, it even made Huffington Post — Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief and the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport board are suddenly very opposed to…
Friend of Unfair Park PeterK directs our attention this morning to a just-posted Flickr set from friend of the show Scott Dorn, a photographer who has spent the last several years documenting this teardown town. Turns out, Scott got a last-minute call late last week from Lindamood Demolition, the company…
This morning Sports Illustrated launched a site allowing folks to vote on the Most Decisive Super Bowl Moments, which coincides with a list that appears in the issue hitting stands today. One moment — a “game-changing play, player’s leadership or coach’s decision” — from each Super Bowl is pulled out…
Shortly before The Dallas Morning News announced the erection of its paywall, which goes into place February 15, publisher and CEO Jim Moroney sent to the staff a memo in which he wrote: Brace yourself. Said Moroney in a phone conversation with Unfair Park at 6:30 this morning, as he…
You’ll note there’s an empty space on the American Airlines Center’s calendar tonight, which doesn’t meant it’ll be dark. Far from it: The National Sports Marketing Network, a sports-biz trade organization with some 10,000 members, is holding its first North Texas Chapter meeting tonight, a three-and-a-half-hour networking backslapper that wraps…
For the hell of it, I ran a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission report this morning to see how the off-premise beer-and-wine permitting process was going — seeing as how on New Year’s Eve, only a handful of applicants could sell spirits in formerly dry parts of town. And as you’ll…
First, The Dallas Morning News was going to begin charging for online content December 14; then came a delay. But this morning comes The Official Word, via online story (still free!) and press release, outlining the “The Next Generation” in A.H. Belo news delivery.What the story says that the release…
Everything I’ve learned about the more-n-likely-to-happen Kabletown … pardon, Comcast-NBC merger I’ve learned from 30 Rock. Well, OK, not everything: This morning’s New York Times alters our attention to a December 23 letter Comcast’s veep of Regulatory and State Legislative Affairs sent to the Federal Communications Commission that suggests the…
For the last eight months, I’ve lived within earshot of La Grange, this year’s Observer winner for Best Bar 2010, and have come to know owners Rob and Stephanie Schumacher through the drunkest of times and the soberest of times. Their foray into revitalizing their historic Deep Ellum block, along…
While everyone’s looking back at 2010, let’s glance ahead at the first meeting of the Landmark Commission in the new year, which takes place Tuesday. There you’ll find the results of that so-called “courtesy review” First Presbyterian Church of Dallas asked for in advance of its decision to purchase 508…
There may have been an Observer staff meeting this year during which Jason Roberts’s name wasn’t brought up. Maybe one. The rest of the time, we were either talking about Jason Roberts or talking about how we should probably write about Jason Roberts, except that we were over-covering Jason Roberts,…
I took the boy to the Highland Park Village Barber Shop this morning, following a particularly cruel trick played on him yesterday at Superchops. Afterward, we came downstairs and ran into original Fearing’s manager Justin Beam, one of the Twomey Concepts-uals behind the cinema, which shuttered in August ’09 for…
“In Dallas, sometimes we don’t look back,” says Veletta Lill, former city council member and executive director of the Dallas Arts District. “It’s aiways important to be looking in one’s rear-view mirror and, at the same time, keep your eye on the road.”Lill, who kept the wrecking ball away from…
Last week the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission sent over that press release listing the two new retailers given permits to sell beer and wine in previously dry parts of Dallas. This morning, after seeing this Channel 5 story about how the newly wet are missing out on year-end champagne sales,…
Into the wee small hours of Christmas Morning I cued up some Freddie King from January Sound in March ’75 — “Hideaway,” to be specific. At which point a caller rang up The Ticket request line with some (rather slurred but very happy) news: The Zewkeeper in charge of the…
By the time we arrived at the Eight Track Museum, James “Big Bucks” Burnett’s tribute to myriad dead media, some 60 or 70 folks had already come and gone, each one gladly forking over the suggested $10 donation per person needed to keep the doors open. At 4 on Christmas…
If you listen to KTCK-AM (1310, The Ticket), perhaps you’ve heard: Tomorrow night, from 9 till midnight, I’m yet again hosting a Christmas-music show. Which reminds me of this Darlene Love, um, standard? At last, an excuse for collecting far too many Christmas odds and sods lo these last few…
I’ve yet to step foot into the Natural Grocers that recently opened in a smallish section of the old Preston Forest Whole Foods, but my wife has and says it’s “a cross between Sprouts and Roy’s.” As in: There’s very little produce, all the meats are frozen, and there are…
