News circulation cratering, despite Belo’s desperate spin

Belo reports that the circulation at the News is off about 13 percent for daily and 12 percent for Sunday, as compared to six months ago, as noted in a
company press release.

Of course, the News’ own reporting on this, as part of circ numbers at major newspapers around the country, “massages” the message.

The company attributed the steep drop in part to two deliberate policy changes, which account for about seven points of the daily decline and eight points on Sunday. On April 1, it ceased including third-party barter circulation in reported figures. It also ceased distributing to areas approximately 200 miles or more outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

OK, let’s take Belo’s estimates at face value. That still leaves a 6 percent drop on daily and 4 percent on Sunday circ numbers.

Yes, other major dailies continue to drop, but not at that rate. The Los Angeles Times, which is cratering in part due to corporate-imposed staff-whacking as serious as anything Belo has done here, is the only big-sized daily to have a greater rate of circulation decline.

The story then goes on to spin towards Bob Mong and Bob Dechard’s Net-oriented vision for the future:

Newspaper owners have bolstered their Web sites to attract online readers and advertisers, helping to make up for the loss of readers, the association said. It said newspaper Web sites serving the 100 largest markets reported an average 8 percent growth in their online audiences.

Strange, though. Belo doesn’t release numbers for those sites, or say how much it has grown over the survey time period. Maybe there’s nothing to massage there.

Oops, Kathy Goolsby; let’s get the right year

The Dallas Morning News reporter claims the Lancaster School District has added 1,132 students since August 2005.

Wrong.

That would be August 2004.

Wonder if she misread her notes, wrote something down wrong (assuming she did not have a tape recorder), or if she was given the wrong information.

Belo’s butt is in a sling now!

Read the age-discrimination and pension-mismanagement lawsuit against the News; a number of former employees are alleging age discrimination and connecting it to a post-2000 split in pension offerings.

That said, I know age-discrimination lawsuits aren’t easy to prove. But the pension mismanagement issues, including ERISA issues, stand independent of the age of any employees.

The online-focused Snooze still isn't so online user-friendly

I was recently looking for the online version of the Oct. 19 Business section story about D.R. Horton pulling out of its agreement to buy Hank Haney’s McKinney golf ranch.

It’s said when I can’t find this story on the Morning News website after doing not one but two keyword searches and Google News spits it up immediately. The firsr search was “Hank Haney” + “Horton” the second was “Haney” + “Horton.” Zero matches both times. Score another for the Snooze, even with its vaunted move to a more online-based newspaper.

Another News editorial reflecting on its poor environmental record

The Snooze chastises, even castigates Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell for calling for “conservation not construction,” i.e., that Texas needs to stop building so many damned damns.

Here’s the tsk-tsk:

How disappointing. Conservation is important, but it alone can't supply booming population centers like Dallas/Fort Worth enough water.

Meanwhile, the Snooze can’t write editorials to mention how we can conserve more water than we do now, and do that on a more regular basis. It can’t talk about how much we could eliminate the need for more damned dams, in terms of acre-feet to not be built, if we implement specific water conservation strategies. And it can’t at all talk about the question of whether we need to manage population growth here.

Just one more proof that the same paper that fired Jim Frisinger and Timothy O’Leary at the beck and call of Smokey Joe Barton doesn’t “get” environmentalism.

(You haven’t seen anything much above the wishy-washy level on TXU’s coal-fired power plant proposal, have you?)

Will the News’ shinola hit the fan over this???

Found in Friday’s News: “Be Who You Are,” a gay lifestyles special section. Wow, I can’t wait to see the Neanderthal letters to the editor over this baby.

Good electric deregulation story, could have had an addition

The News had a very good article on the looming Jan. 1 deadline for full electric utility deregulation. But, it could have gone one better.

As I e-mailed writer Elizabeth Souder:

Given that the News is regularly doing candidate sidebars about the four gubernatorial candidates' POV on various issues, dropping one in beside your story about their stances on going through w/full dereg or not would have been great.