Robert Decherd’s gotta be scratching his head. Yesterday, he got the good news that the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas, was dismissing a shareholders’ suit against the owners of The Dallas Morning News over the company’s circulation scandal that turned into quite the mess in 2004. But for…
Some folks have asked about the change in our Unfair Park blog banner–the chalk outline, the crime-scene tape. Well, yesterday we said goodbye to Big Tex, the original mascot of Unfair Park. We’d been told that we “can’t have Big Tex” because he’s a registered trademark, and the State Fair…
And so the conspiracy theories begin about just who was behind the immigration rallies that took place this week, not only in Dallas but across the country. Me, I tend to shy away from any Web site that employs Tammy Bruce as a columnist, but feel free to check it…
So it won’t seem like a big surprise when The Dallas Morning News debuts its new section geared toward busy mommies, here’s the premature announcement…oooh, perhaps that’s the wrong choice of words. No matter. Actually, the News is one of six newspapers (out of 18 that applied) dipping into the…
Former Republican strategist-turned-Republican critic Kevin Phillips, now a bestselling author with such titles as American Dynasty (about the Bush family) and Wealth and Democracy, is at it again with his brand-new tome American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. (Ah,…
I’ll admit it. I watch Deal or No Deal like a fiend. I cheer, I yell, I jeer. (If this show is a complete mystery to you, go here for a rather cynical explanation by the Freakonomics freaks.) There are contestants I love totally and ones I loathe completely. On…
Amazing the stuff you find trolling the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Web site when you’ve got nothing else to do. For instance, take this little item from Belo Corp.’s Form 10-K annual report, filed with the SEC just last week: “On January 5, 2006, Infinity Radio, Inc., a subsidiary…
Steve Blow apologizes for having an opinion. I’m sure it won’t happen again. –Matt Pulle…
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,…
