Last November, Texas Monthly’s Mimi Swartz artfully deconstructed tort reform and its unimagined consequences in her November 2005 story “Hurt? Injured? Need a Laywer? Too Bad!” After Swartz’s much-talked-about story appeared, the special interest group Texans for Lawsuit Reform published a 5,300-word memo that attempted to rebut Swartz’s reporting, citing…
The underperforming stock of the Belo Corp., owners of The Dallas Morning News and WFAA-Channel 8, is getting much attention today; see here and here for commentary from those who know about such things. Both stories contain this quote from Belo chairman Robert Decherd: “The advertising market has been more…
“Big Tex is a problem. He’s our Mickey Mouse.” And with those words, Nancy Wiley, a consultant to the State Fair of Texas, kindly requested that we remove Big Tex’s dorky visage from Unfair Park. Turns out Big Tex is a registered trademark–“both his name and his image,” Wiley said…
This ranks as one of the worst-kept media secrets in town: WFAA-Channel 8 is in the process of converting a portion of its revamped 9 a.m. show Good Morning Texas (or GMT, for the hip frau) into paid programming, or “advertainment,” as one concerned citizen puts it. According to many…
Lots of speculation on the mysterious absence of Greg Williams, one half of The Ticket’s “Hardline,” the most popular sports talk radio show in town. Seems ol’ Hammer has been absent since last Wednesday. His partner, Mike Rhyner, has been extremely vague about the void on the air, and the…
New York University professor Jay Rosen and a 17-member brood of undergraduate and graduate J-school students siphoned from Rosen’s blogging 101 class set out to sift and rank the best newspaper blogs from among the nation’s top 100 newspapers by circulation. The winner? The Houston Chronicle. “By a mile.” The…
In today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram is a piece about Jon Stewart, written by Alyson Ward. It includes this nugget, which is essentially the central point to her alarmingly unspectacular, tired story: “Don’t laugh. American culture, it seems, can’t decide whether to classify Stewart as a comedian or a journalist.” Really,…
