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…
If you have been watching the Ken Burns PBS documentary on the Vietnam War, then one of the themes you have seen powerfully depicted is the campaign of public lying carried out by President Lyndon Baines Johnson and his team in defense of the war. Long after LBJ’s own Secretary…
Hunter Allis has always loved playing video games. But unlike some fellow 14-year-olds, Hunter’s interest goes beyond simply playing the games. He dreamed of someday creating them. Hunter was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, in which one side of the organ is weaker than the other. He’s had four open-heart…
One night last spring, infamous right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and Dallas’ homegrown white nationalist, Richard Spencer walked into a karaoke bar on Abrams Road in Lake Highlands. They left less than a half-hour later after being kicked by One Nostagia Tavern’s bartenders, but not before someone filmed a video of…
Vanessa Swarovski, heiress to the Austrian crystal empire, is ditching her house in Westlake. The six-bedroom, nine-bathroom mansion in the tony North Texas exurb is estimated to be worth about $4 million, but Swarovski and her ex-husband, former MLB scrub Jorge Piedra, are selling it in an absolute auction June…
Have you ever seen the Mailander House in Waco? Or the Gorman House? Surely, you’ve seen the Magnolia House. Each was renovated by Chip and Joanna Gaines on the HGTV show Fixer Upper. The Mailander house in Waco, renovated in Season 1, is beautiful and highly regarded, I am told…
Last week, with his shock announcement that he’d be joining CBS No. 1 broadcast team rather than signing on with another NFL team, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo joined a long line of Cowboys who’ve taken the soft landing of broadcasting. The reactions to Romo’s hiring have been mixed. While…
For passengers, the photo in the March edition of American Way, American Airline’s in-flight magazine, probably didn’t raise eyebrows. In it, two Australian bros behind a Sydney-based mobile bar service caper around in pilot’s uniforms, getting drunk. The business replicates the experience of getting a drink from an airline bar…
The quadrotor rises with a thin, reedy buzz as it takes off on its maiden flight. It’s Christmas 2016, and hundreds of thousands of drone pilots across the United States are experiencing similar moments. My wife bought it for me, one of what consumer associations say is more than 1.5…
The Dallas Morning News has been doing some good stories lately about the need to clean up a low-income housing program that operates on surplus city-owned lots. I wrote some pieces myself not long ago about ideas for cleaning up poor neighborhoods in West Dallas. But, wait. We’re not going…
This may be something you don’t even want to know about, but it’s about you, so I thought I should mention it to you. James M. Moroney III, publisher and CEO of A.H. Belo Corp., the company that publishes The Dallas Morning News, has been talking about you. In an…
