take a close look at the photo of T Boone after the jump and tell me if he's awake...
In questioning your central assumption, that the black and white fireworks photo was a bug, not a feature, I'm reminded of the scene in the Eddie Murphy movie where Detective Axel Foley enters his apartment and casually tosses his tropical fish a slice of white bread. Like trapped Amazon fish doomed to live out their tiny lives on a diet of Wonder Bread, the elderly, demented, or otherwise habit-trapped DMN subscribers too passive to care whether they get vacation service or even a newspaper at all have become the focussed target market Wick Allison has repeatedly urged Robert Decherd to circle his wagons around and embrace, and so he has, just as Wick has reduced the commentary he will hold court to hear to those obedient voices he can control. Outside such magic circles "mistake", "don't give a shit", and "marketing objectives" become harder and harder to distinguish.
So, as Michael Landauer would contend, an opinion piece by Mark Davis factually incorrect on its face still offers the reader multiple values, not with respect to Davis' opinion, because it's patently worthless, don't you know, a house built on an objective Landauer-revealed pack of lies, but entirely worthwhile still with respect to the clickability of both the Davis lies Landauer has revealed and of Landauer's revelation itself. Pay no attention to what we publish, Landauer tells us--heck, Landauer will be the first to demonstrate just why what they publish is factually false on its face and so not worth reading--but do continue to click on both Davis's falsehoods and on Landauer's revelations of them because the DMN did publish them for you. So, regardless of what it throws out there, the DMN still needs the clickstream revenue, and you, little fish, you need that soggy slice of floating white bread to sustain the remainder of your foolish aquarium life. So they talk up Obama and endorse McCain, publish a black and white fireworks photo or--face it, why not?--next time around a sassy picture of a cat in a clothes drier instead, and what's the difference? It's all the same. Heck, just be grateful you got any sort of fireworks picture at all.
Bethany, this is so close to home. I've been a DMN subscriber since 1986, a double-subscriber since we started our business in 1997. But all that ended this summer when they scandalized an 18 year old kid who's dad happens to be superintendent of DISD because his son made it into Harvard. We cancelled two subscriptions for home and business.
With all the discussions of what will "make it" in a journalistically free internet world, the unfortunately ignored reason is because of the quality of writing. I regret cancelling my subscription because many fine writers are still contributing to DMN(ie. Kevin Sherrington), yet the "yellow dog" idealism of the current editorial board just doesn't seem to "get" what people are looking for (run-on sentence but I'm too tired to correct).
Let the writers write, and shut up about how to run Dallas.
Let's sit shiva for the Dallas Morning News, and try to figure out how we're going to accurately tell the story of Dallas in years to come without it.
This sounds like the party line from the folks over at D Magazine and from former TDMN employees. I sure here it lots and lots.
I understand the disappointment of an ex-employee, but D Magazine is competing for ad dollars, clicks, stories and prestige. They want TDMN to die because it benefits their properties.
There is plenty of willingness, money, and existing media outlets and talent who are ready to fill the news void, and especially the ad revenue, if and when TDMN does not survive. Personally, I think its demise it greatly exaggerated.
Yet another reason the loss of the Dallas Morning News (or any daily) is not that big of a deal.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytime...l-web-start-up/
Money and journalistic outlets will always chase ad dollars.
Stop parroting Wick & co.
I think you're missing the entire point of the post. I said (in a nutshell) that the DMN's lack of quality control - brought about largely because of massive layoffs - was discouraging. I do not see how the paper can maintain even the paltry level it has now if it has another round of layoffs.
And that is an opinion shared by many of my fellow former and present DMNers. You can have a similar opinion to another group without parroting it.
If that was your point, then you're right. I missed it.
The post was wordy and the closing paragraphs about the DNR (really? they have given up?) and the Wick-like comment about the loss of the paper did not say, "I'm discouraged." The feeling in those paragraphs were overt.
There are lots of under- and unemployed ex-Belo people in Dallas who are happy to criticize the paper, but they offer few good ideas for fixing the local news industry or launching their own news operations ala Pegasus.
And by good ideas, I mean something more than tired retreads like, "Fire Dechard and [fill in the columnist]," or, "fix the Web site." Well, duh.
I do agree that the second major camp of critics (besides competing media) are the bitter group of current and ex-DMN-ers.
Commenting by HaloScan
