Wait, didn’t Time already name SMU prof Susanne Johnson as person of the year? Hey, it’s time to take whatever flipped-up-collar Polo-shirt snot-ball stereotypes you may still have about SMU students and toss them in the trash .. or at least store them in the closet for an emergency. The…
The fish tank is getting cloudy. Good thing I’m not a goldfish. Last night I made dinner on a camp stove and smoked up the entire house. Everything smells like seared olive oil and teriyaki sauce. I got dressed in the dark this morning, which some people say I do…
Don’t know about y’all, but my neighborhood, in southwest Dallas, looks like a hurricane plowed through. We haven’t had power since about 7 p.m. last night, and large trees are in the streets, on cars, on houses and on sheds. Some very large trees were completely uprooted. When the storm…
The U.S. military is cracking down on soldiers who write or post to blogs, Wired reported yesterday. In the piece, a milblogger named Matthew Burden says this action represents “the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging…No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This…
Some Friends of Unfair Park have asked today why the current debate over the Trinity Parkway hasn’t received any substantial coverage in Dallas’ Only Daily. This sneak peek at tomorrow’s editorial page, courtesy Dallas Morning Views, should provide at least part of your answer: Tomorrow’s editorials TRINITY – Building on…
You know who’s happy about the news of The News’ steep drop in circulation numbers? Um, Tom DeLay, that’s who. Says so right on his blog, which is, surprisingly, not called The Emasculated Douchebag. “The old media, with its three main news networks and daily papers of record in the…
Looks like that Editor & Publisher sneak peek at The Dallas Morning News’ circulation numbers last week was way, way off — by, oh, 9 percentage points. This morning, the Audit Bureau of Circulations released the newspaper biz’s spring numbers, and Dallas’ Only Daily had what looks to be the…
We gave KTVT-Channel 11 a hard time last week; deserved it too, what with all the fear-mongering and ambulance-chasing going on at the CBS affiliate under the new news directors. But last night, on-the-outs anchor Tracy Rowlett, a man who’s probably never had much use for a police scanner, gave…
For the last few weeks, I’ve started to sense that KTVT-Channel 11’s newcasts have been a little…oh…I dunno…edgy, but not in the good way. There’s just something sort of panic-striken about them, something a little too urgent — desperate, that’s the word. The anchors and reporters and the weather people…
You’ve got to save money to make money: Belo bossman Robert Decherd As prophesied, that Belo Corp. press release concerning its first-quarter earnings came out this morning, and, hey, things are looking good…um…ish. Goodish. Or maybe esque. Or maybe not. Profit dropped 10 percent, after all. Belo’s reporting that net…
A lot of you don’t like the format change over at KZPS-FM (92.5); you’ve said so right here. Well, you’re in good company: Stephen Colbert is also no fan. Last night on The Colbert Report, he included ZPS’ ditching of advertisements as one of “The Four Horsemen of the A-Pop-Calypse,”…
While everyone else is figuring out whether to use their Katies as doorstops or hat racks, the Dallas Observer is proud to announce we’ve moved on to far more prestigious honors: Our team took home the first-place trophy at the first annual LIFT Charity Grown-Up Spelling Bee, held today at…
On Monday, the Audit Bureau of Circulations will release its spring circulation numbers for major daily newspapers. But today’s online edition of Editor & Publisher has a sneak peek at those numbers, and they aren’t good: “According to industry sources, overall daily circulation for the six month[s] ending March 2007…
Local radio just got a little bit better with the return of Redbeard. When Chancellor Media Corporation abruptly and without warning yanked Q102 off the air in the late summer of 1998, there was a rumor floating about that Redbeard — the longtime voice and, well, beard of Texas’ Best…
This week, at least, Time magazine insists the word “fanboy” has been transformed from pejorative to powerful compliment — at least, if you’re one of those fanboys who runs a Web site where other fanboys post movie reviews read by other fanboys who will make or break fanboy product just…like…that…
Dunno which is the bigger news: that Clear Channel-owned KZPS-FM (92.5) is going commercial-free, with a single sponsor paying for an hour’s worth of broadcasting at a clip, or that the classic-rock mainstay is switching formats. Says here that KZPS has brought on four initial sponsors — Southwest Airlines, AT&T,…
One of my own favorite reads is Back Talk, the blog for the Advocate magazines, and not just because it gets a lot of posts from Jeff Siegel, who is one of the city’s most acute political observers. It also just tickles the hell out of me that the publisher…
If you don’t own a BlackBerry, well, you probably don’t care that some 8 million users worldwide are having big problems with their devices, oh, right about now — with no fix in the foreseeable future. (Update: Service is back up. Whew.) To me, frankly, the most interesting thing about…
All your comments from the past 14 months are being restored as you read this. Turns out we lost, oh, about a thousand of them during yesterday’s transition. That means that for the next few hours, as we rebuild the Midway, you will not be able to access any Unfair…
Uh. Yeah. Well. Hunh. Turns out that during our technical transition yesterday, we managed to lose some reader comments — not that many, something like a couple hundred out of several thousand. Many of them were attached to Bible Girl items; apparently, the Lord does move in mysterious ways, because…
Robert Decherd, looking happy — seriously Yesterday, we posted the nutty — by which we mean, totally credible and completely reasonable — press release from Dallas-based Life Media Network International, in wihch it said it’s planning by year’s end “to acquire major media assets and companies,” among them XM Satellite…
The answer to that question is: Uh, like, no? But we just got the damnedest press release that says Dallas-based Life Media Network International is planning by year’s end “to acquire major media assets and companies,” among them XM Satellite Radio, Clear Channel Communications and Belo Corporation. No shit. Says…
