Helping who live better, where?

As you probably know, we also publish magazines in Lake Highlands, Far North Dallas and Preston Hollow. One of our avid readers in Preston Hollow, Louisa Meyer, just wrote an op-ed piece for the Dallas Business Journal about what she sees as the Morning News' one-sided coverage of DISD issues. I tried to set up a link to the item, but as it turns out, you have to be a subscriber to read it online.

In a nutshell, Meyer asks a few hard questions about the News' ubiquitous "Helping You Live Better Here" promotion, which I guess is designed to build subscriptions. Anyway, among other things in the article, Meyer quotes the News' Bill McKenzie, an editorial page wonk, saying: "Part of our job as an editorial board is to help instill hope and diminish cynicism about DISD." Meyer's point: How does writing endlessly and primarily about DISD screw-ups, of which there are certainly a few, instill any hope or diminish cynicism among readers? Meyer is a W.T. White parent, 2006 DISD volunteer of the year, and all-around good neighbor, so it's worth grabbing a Business Journal (which has certainly become a respected business publication and is worth reading weekly) to look at what she's saying and giving it some thought. What's she's saying certainly applies here in our neighborhood, too.

Comments

[Jeff Siegel]

Let's see: Readers think the News does a crummy job. The Business Journal, apparently, thinks the News does a crummy job. The Observer thinks the News does a crummy job. I think the News does a crummy job.

Is the News the only one that doesn't think it does a crummy job?

[Norman Alston]

D Magazine probably likes it.

[Farinata X]

Part of the problem in this specific instance is that Bill McKenzie is a hack. This is the man, after all, who once wrote of George W. Bush, "there's a Zen-like quality to this brush-clearing President." And this immortal description came not in 2001, when much was still unknown, though suspected, but only a few months ago, when GW's consummate buffoonery had become obvious to all, except to Bill the Hack, of course. On the larger issue of the DMN's DISD coverage, of course they do a crummy job. Why is that an argument?

[Kyle Rains]

Holly Hacker is on the dallasnews blog saying she's 'trying to kill the messenger'.

Personally I think the News reporters are lazy. It's so easy to get over Ross Ave to get a story rather than go out to McKinney and report on the football players murders, crazy cheerleaders and Latina gang fight in the cafeteria. Besides, all those homebuilders out there slapping up slop on slabs advertise heavily in the DMN.

I can tell people a million times that Woodrow has more National Merit Scholars than Frisco but I don't think anyone out there actually believes me because of decades of the DMN dissing DISD.

[Rick Wamre]

Jeff just forwarded the link to Morning News blog (http://metro.beloblog.com/archives/2007/06/live_bitter_here.html#comments) that Kyle is talking about, on which one of the writers is already trashing Louisa's DBJ op-ed piece. Check it out for yourself; I would try to synthesize the comments, but to get the full feeling for how the Morning News responds to a reader/subscriber's opinion, you should really read this for yourself...

[Jeff Siegel]

Not sure why the link won't work. Sometimes, my blogmeister desires aren't up to my blogmeister skills.

Why The News is being so crappy about this:

1. Natural News arrogance.
2. They have been beat repeatedly on the story by Allen Gwinn at dallas.org.
3. Natural News arrogance.

For what it's worth, the News doesn't really cover anything anymore (except the Cowboys). It reacts. It's a fairly typical way to cut costs in the newspaper business. The problem isn't so much what Louisa Meyer wrote in the Business Journal. It's that the News just isn't interested in the DISD in terms of return on investment. Otherwise, it would have more than Holly Hacker on the education beat. This fall, on a Monday morning, count how many bylines you see in the sports section for the Cowboys. It may be close to a dozen.

[Jeff Siegel]

Now the link works!

[Louisa Meyer]

Regarding Belo's Blog posting about my commentary, I say again:

Was there similar coverage when the same newspaper took a $30 million hit for misrepresenting its circulation figures to advertisers?

For more details on the credit card investigation, please also read http://www.texasisd.com/article_58292.shtml

[Louisa Meyer]

Sent to me by a friend in the journalism community:

I think the DMN response (Holly Hacker) was Ann Coulter-like, ignore the main point to deflect criticism, muddy the waters (did DMN run thirty-plus stories on one truck driver?) and mock the writer. Their conclusion--kill the messenger--is also not accurate--the point is that they have gone beyond being the messenger--a legitimate newspaper role--to trying to "create" a scandal to sell papers. I thought their response was juvenile and unnecessarily snide, beneath the dignity of a major newspaper.