Since December, the city's been contemplating an ordinance that would "ban distribution boxes not conforming to rigid standards for size, color and material." Looks like it's about to happen -- thank God too, because newspaper boxes are all that stands between a shithole and a class act. But you know who doesn't seem terribly impressed by the city's efforts to ban control newspaper racks in certain parts of the city -- chiefly, in and around downtown and Uptown? Editor & Publisher, that's who.
While the journo-biz mag doesn't come right out and say it sounds like a crap idea -- and it is, since the only way into the new proposed standardized boxes is to get into a lottery that favors dailies and "prominent downtown publications," whatever that means -- it does mention one thing The Dallas Morning News leaves out of its story. One of those folks at City Hall fully behind the city's pay-to-play scheme is Mayor Laura Miller -- "a former Dallas Observer columnist," adds E&P. We can read between the lines. --Robert Wilonsky
