In the wake of yesterday’s announcement that the Bancroft family had indeed agreed to sell Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion to Rupert Murdoch, this morning the Los Angeles Times wonders whether newspaper dynasties aren’t quickly becoming a dying breed. Of course, it need look no further than George…
Look, Los Angeles Times, we read you. Why don’t you read us? From today’s paper, in a story headlined, “Romancing the source: When journalists become involved with newsmakers, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve written their professional obituaries”: • In Dallas, television reporter Sarah Dodd and Police Chief David Kunkle married…
Ginger Allen isn’t the only journalist boasting about a dubious journalism prize. On its Web site, USA Radio Networks still lists the nine Katie Awards the station received from 2004 through 2006 — even though the Dallas Press Club, which hosted the contest, now acknowledges that its former president, Elizabeth…
More news this morning from KTVT-Channel 11. A day after the newsroom there learned that ace reporter-anchor Sarah Dodd had departed 12 days earlier comes word that Ginger Allen has been named the full-time co-anchor of CBS 11 News This Morning — alongside Scott Sams, lucky girl. Allen, of course,…
The most memorable sentence from Belo’s second-quarter earnings results, released this morning, is this one: Newspaper Group segment costs and expenses decreased 9.2 percent versus the second quarter of 2006, due in part to the 2006 headcount reductions at The Dallas Morning News and The Press-Enterprise, and lower newsprint and…
Say it ain’t so: KTVT-Channel 11’s Sarah Dodd is no longer KTVT-Channel 11’s Sarah Dodd. Unfair Park just received a copy of the memo Channel 11’s president and general manager Steve Mauldin sent to the staff today, and he celebrates Dodd’s myriad achievements at the CBS affiliate without offering a…
We had many fine entries in our caption contest today; thanks to the Friends who played along for Wilco tix. Here are just three of our favorites: Southside on Lamar, where toxic gas fumes are on the house! It’s finally gone … wait, Deep Ellum is the other way …..
At this very moment, the family in control — for now — of Dow Jones & Company and The Wall Street Journal is huddled up at the Boston Hilton, trying to figure out if it’s worth selling their crown jewel to Rupert Murdoch for, like, $1.2 billion. The Bancroft family…
Look out — they’re “chasing after the young Mexicans pouring into the area”! And by they, of course, I mean the local media outlets about which AdWeek writes this morning, as it dissects the ultra-competitive Spanish-language radio stations, television stations and newspapers in Dallas-Fort Worth vying for the Hispanic audience’s…
Last week, we reported that Washington, D.C. based Future of Music Coalition was going after San Antonio-based Clear Channel, insisting in documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission that three months after agreeing to play unsigned bands as part of a payola settlement, the media giant was again engaging in…
Now there’s a place for your Loving Tex-Mex with Limburger recipe collection. Dallas has a new food and wine magazine: Culinary Concierge Dallas/Fort Worth, a Web-based magazine, plus a four-color dead-tree quarterly, founded by New Orleans cookbook author and food stylist Kendall Gensler in 2000. Culinary Concierge bills itself as…
This propaganda is on the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ watch list. Because, that’s why. Less than two weeks after kicking off its “nationwide discussion of ‘Islamophobia'” in Dallas, the Washington-based nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations held a similar event yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. But a…
WFAA-Channel 8 chief weather predictor man Troy Dungan said farewell-for-now last night, 31 years after signing on at the station. For his final forecast — during which Dungan was surrounded by “a cast of thousands,” meaning dozens — he had the right attitude: “If it’s wrong, what are they gonna…
Don’t know how the rumors got started — Seattle-based Fisher Communications-owned Pegasus News does, however — but Fair to Midland’s publicist just e-mailed Unfair Park and everyone else to let us and you know that the band ain’t playing no stinkin’ free show on Jul7 25 at the House of…
I am sure that if Jim Schutze were not on vacation, he would want to comment on at least one particular section of Bruce Tomaso’s piece today about how much dough The Trinity Commons Foundation has raised to Sink the Petition! Save the Trinity! I point you specifically to the…
Congratulations to Mike Orren and Pegasus News, which has been acquired by Seattle-based Fisher Communications, a media company that owns some 27 media outlets in the Northwest. Financial terms haven’t been disclosed yet, but they will be: Fischer’s a high-priced NASDAQ-traded stock ($50.80, as of this morning) with extensive Securities…
The big-money men at Dallas’ Beta Capital Group are trying to scrape together enough spare change to stop Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal takeover. Word was only 10 days ago that Rupert Murdoch had succeeded in his efforts to buy The Wall Street Journal from Dow Jones & Co. –…
As Clear Channel owns five major stations in the Dallas market — among them, KHKS-FM (KISS 106, home to Kidd Kraddick), KDGE-FM (102.1, Your Alleged New Rock Alternative) and KZPS-FM (92.5, the recently rechristened Lone Star) — this certainly qualifies as local news. And if you’re an unsigned local artist…
Craig Flournoy and Tracy Everbach’s highly critical Dallas Morning News review in the Columbia Journalism Review, first mentioned here Thursday, has prompted a response from the paper’s Big Bosses, editor Bob Mong and publisher and chief executive officer Jim Moroney. Unfair Park was forwarded a memo M&M sent to staffers…
Photo by John Hibey Mark Birnbaum and Manny Mendoza interviewed Walter Cronkite for their doc-in-progress. Yesterday we mentioned Craig Flournoy and Tracy Everbach’s bad-News piece in the latest Columbia Journalism Review, for which they claim to have interviewed about 100 former newsroomies. But one former Dallas Morning News’er with whom…
A couple of weeks back, Rolling Stone published a lengthy, thoughtful music-biz obit that resonated with industry insiders, with its bad news (album sales down 200 million units since 2000) and inside-baseball history lessons (the collapsed talks between Napster and label heads seven years ago) and the larger and still-unanswered…
Yesterday morning, I found in my in-box this Columbia Journalism Review story about The Dallas Morning News — specifically, about the state o’ Dallas’ Only Daily in the wake of the 2004 and ’06 layoffs that reduced the newsroom staff by 30 percent. The piece — penned by former News-ers…
