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…
This afternoon, Unfair Park will be taking a short hiatus as we remodel the Midway. This shouldn’t take long, which means, of course, it’ll take longer than expected. When we return, we’ll look different and yet very much the same; it’s just a little Botox and those new plugs we’ve…
For some reason, it looks like my head is four inches away from my neck. Must be the hair. Oh, sweet, sweet hair… Christ, at least they could have found a better picture. But, yup, I was indeed a cheerleader at Thomas Jefferson High School, only the photo that appears…
Brian Dennehy keeps on lyin’ about having been in Vietnam. But he’s still great in Silverado. Not lying about that. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, writer Joanne Kaufman penned a delightful story about a conversation with Brian Dennehy. The great actor recently opened with Christopher Plummer on Broadway in Inherit…
It’s a good Friday, all right, when we have a reason to post a pic of Gina Miller. Look, that’s just how we roll. Ed Bark, as always, does the math so you don’t have to: He counts it up, and with the announcement this week that Scott “I Never…
This comes to us courtesy The Dallas Morning News’ Bold Types blog, and it was written, of course, by Jim Schutze’s new favorite pejorative, Steve Blow: I love it. A letter to the editor in this week’s Dallas Observer labels me as “one scary guy.” When I tried to give…
Diane Zamora gives her first interview from prison Sunday on Dateline NBC, which, apparently, has caught every predator it could find. The name Diane Zamora ring a bell? Oughta, even if you weren’t here on December 3, 1995, when then-19-year-old Navy midshipsman Zamora and boyfriend David Graham, then a 20-year-old…
For the first, and almost certainly the last, time in metroplex sports history, Your Dallas Observer softball team is the hottest sports squad in town. (This is usually where’d I insert a snappy, informative link, but, c’mon, we can’t even get our allegedly powder-blue T-shirts — a la the Texas…
C’mon, admit it — you missed Scott Sams just a little. No? Sorry, m’bad. In January, Scott Sams got WFAA-Channel 8 to pay him $660,000 in back pay, damages and attorneys’ fees after he sued the station for getting canned in 2004. Now, the Sherman-stuck anchor found a way to…
A few moments ago, a Friend of Unfair Park called our attention to Richard Durrett’s posting on The Dallas Morning News’ Texas Rangers blog, specifically the item about how Ameriquest Field is now the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. But, see, what got our Friend really interested was the way in…
We also think Darrell Jordan stole his haircut from 1924. A Friend of Unfair Park last night begged us — well, gently nudged, anyway — to link to Dave Levinthal’s kinda-like-wow revelation yesterday that mayoral candidate Darrell Jordan is a plagiarist. We just figured something that astounding would make the…
This is what The Dallas Morning News is cooking up for new mommies. Daddies, you already have this. There’s nothing less interesting to newspaper readers than newspaper writers and newspaper editors wringing their sweaty hands over the future of the newspaper business. But here’s something in which you might have…
