Dear Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall: You and I have an issue in common, but I get the sense that you may not have gone through the difficult and deeply personal process of dealing with yours yet. We’re both from Detroit, but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about…
Conservative TV and radio show host Glenn Beck once had the ear or the ire of almost every political wonk and zealot in America, depending on which side of the political aisle they were on. These days? Well, let’s just say that his on-air crying fits would make a lot…
Late last week, thanks to in large part to a Deadspin-produced supercut of news anchors across the country reading from the same fake-news-bashing script, Sinclair Broadcast Group, the United States’ largest owner of TV stations, went viral. It wasn’t the first time for the company, which frequently sends its local…
Are you a recent college graduate in journalism or mass communications? Really? Didn’t want to learn computer coding, huh? Well, that’s OK because despite what you might have read on Twitter, America still needs reporters who can dig in, get the facts and break news. We at the Dallas Observer…
Seven months before the 2018 midterm election, President Donald Trump is already staffing up to run for re-election. Lucky for the media, lovers of absurdist humor and those who like necklaces made of munitions, Dallas’ Katrina Pierson made the squad Tuesday, joining Trump 2020 as a senior adviser. According to…
Last week The Dallas Morning News reported that the site selection team from Amazon had been in town looking at downtown Dallas as a finalist for Amazon’s new not-the-real-headquarters development. If that’s true – and you never know – I thought I should write to Amazon. But I wanted to…
Do you dream of being a writer? Do you want to push the boundaries of language to bring new insight into the human condition with your amazing, creative prose? Well, good luck with your novel, pal. Now move on. You newshounds out there, take a look at this: The Dallas…
March 5, 2018: A headline in The Dallas Morning News reads, “Where does our poop and pee go in Dallas? Curious Texas investigates.” By Jennifer Emily. June 5, 1971: With a double partial major under his belt in English literature and something else suggested by a graduation counselor two weeks before…
Quite literally, judging from their lead story right now. Is it lunch yet?…
Texas Rangers TV color analyst CJ Nitkowski caught a lot of flak on Twitter over the weekend after he liked a tweet from a group called the Proud Boys that included a photo of the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Proud Boys, established…
The advertising campaigns for the National Rifle Association’s streaming channel NRA TV have become something of a red-meat factory for its most ardent supporters and a target for criticism as the group turns its aim toward the media. The latest commercial featuring NRA TV host and former KXAS-TV (NBC 5) reporter…
Last year, WFAA-TV (Channel 8) ace investigative reporter Brett Shipp told a story about poor and abused tenants in Dallas right out of Charles Dickens’ early 19th century London. In a wretched hovel owned by a cruel and indifferent landlord, a Dallas man was unable to defend himself against a rat…
A little more than three weeks ago, Cowboys writer Bob Sturm — winner of the Observer’s best sportswriter award two of the last three years — made a mysterious announcement. He was leaving The Dallas Morning News, Sturm said on Twitter, the paper for which he’d written, off and on,…
Earlier this month, Facebook announced a series of changes to the way posts are funneled to users’ news feeds, beginning with a prioritization of content from friends and family members (like your racist Aunt Millie) over that of commercial sources (like the thoroughly open-minded, delightful, informative Dallas Observer). That’s a…
Like clockwork, every couple of weeks since new Chief U. Renee Hall took over the Dallas Police Department, one Dallas media outlet or another has dared to ask the question: Why isn’t the chief in uniform yet? This week, it was The Dallas Morning News’ turn. As part of its…
The Dallas Morning News editorial page took a truly bold step this week by announcing that one of the finalists for its annual Texan of the Year award is Richard Spencer. He’s the Dallas native and St. Mark’s School graduate who has become the public face of American white nationalism…
The Dallas Morning News, Dallas’ daily, built on the rock of truth and buttressed by piles of Belo cash, has a problem — a festering, creeping affliction eating at the institution’s very core — since the paper moved from its longtime home on Young Street to its new digs in…
When you read a story in the media and it’s got an odd twist at the top, the twist is a signal. It means the real message is between the lines. Five times in the last three weeks, somebody at The Dallas Morning News has reported that Mike Snyder, a…
Brett Shipp, Channel 8’s longtime investigative and political reporter, quit the station on Tuesday to run for congress, the station announced Tuesday. Shipp, who’s been with WFAA for 22 years, is joining the already crowded Democratic primary field in Texas U.S. House District 32, the seat currently occupied by Republican…
Still at the center of a controversy stemming from an apparent conspiracy to plant fake news in The Washington Post, James O’Keefe will speak at an event on Southern Methodist University’s campus Wednesday night. O’Keefe is the head of Project Veritas, a conservative media activist group that specializes in undercover…
Very hard to know from our vantage point here in the boondocks how President Trump’s swamp-draining operation may be going in Washington, but we know how it’s going here. The swamp is full. We’ve got what may well be hundreds of millions of dollars in missing and misspent money given…
Last week, I wrote about Kevin F. Lawrence, executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association, the state’s largest law enforcement association. I took him to task for blaming the NFL knee-taking protest on dishonest reporting about police brutality by the national media. Maybe we need to get back into…
