Another drawback to small-town papers

Someone with money and/or an “old family name” who thinks they can throw their weight around. If too much dealings with people like that, depending on a town’s collective “DNA,” is too much the price to pay, then I’m ready to move on past the “more healthy” small town papers out of journalism.

School newspaper leaned on over gay support

Another high school principal thinks the student newspaper is his puppet on a string. So he suspends the paper’s journalism teacher for two months for allowing
a gay support op-ed. It was even school-relevant, as the student author wrote about her friend coming out.

Biggest newspapers have a higher profit margin than Exxon!

If this advantage isn’t enough to stop the Big Media boo-hooing, or to lead them to go private or otherwise fight back against Wall Street, what will?

A typical newspaper with a 100,000 circulation makes a 15.6 percent annual pre-tax profit margin, according to Inland Daily Press Association and the International Newspaper Financial Executives. The Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and other media outlets, for example, operates on an 18.3 percent pre-tax profit margin. Gannett, which owns 90 newspapers in the U.S., including USA Today, operates on a 21.4 percent pre-tax profit margin. By comparison, Walmart Stores Inc. operates on a 5.4 percent pre-tax profit margin, while Exxon Mobil Corporation operates on a 17.9 percent pre-tax profit margin.

So, sorry, we’re not poor. The problem is stockholders still think this is the 1920s, and CEOs won’t fight back. Of course, many of them, if they have performance bonuses, have their bread buttered in a non-editorial way, anyway.

God, is the Chron’s telemarketing persistent, or what?

Thank doorknobs for caller ID, so I can just refuse to answer the phone whenever a 713 area code shows up. Even the Dallas Symphony Orchestra wasn’t this persistently annoying.

I do NOT want you, Houston Chronicle. I get the BCS Eagle for free at work. Besides, from everything I know, you’re even more in the way of conservative whackjobs on the op-ed page than the Snooze is.