Mineral Wells: Another CNHI paper shuts, leaves news desert

 The Mineral Wells Index, in Palo Pinto County, Texas, closed as of the first of the year. It had cut to semiweekly either at the start of, or maybe before the start of, the pandemic. I remember it 20 years ago as a five-day daily.

Even then, CNHI was cheap. No separate publisher for it; it shared one with six-day daily Weatherford, the Democrat, 20 miles east.

Even then, CNHI was also dumb, lazy or both. At the tail end of the old century, as the Fort Worth StartleGram pulled in its horns from circulating west of Abilene (and the Dallas Morning Snooze filled a gap by going all the way out to New Mexico), I thought CNHI had a more localized opportunity to fill in a gap.

Do a Sunday paper for Weatherford-Mineral Wells combined, and treat the Weatherford Saturday paper as a "bulldog" for it. Ditto on the weekend Mineral Wells paper.

With Weatherford College in Weatherford, you could run local sports news in that Sunday edition, for example. And, if CNHI had thought to do its Texas regional reporters, or even borrowing a page from USA Today and Gannett way back then, a weekly "roundup" of stuff. 

But, it didn't.

And, CNHI won't sell papers at market cost today.

Instead, even as the Retirement System of Alabama claims it wants to sell CNHI, and CNHI claims it wants to sell individual papers, it "can't," not at market value. Nor can the RSA cell CNHI at market value.

This would cave the entire value of its pension system, assuming that its value, in terms of the percentage that's invested in CNHI, is based on some stated value written by the RSA 20 years ago. In short, if not actual pension fraud, there's something like the spirit of it going on.

As for Mineral Wells? The old Palo Pinto paper in the county seat closed some time ago, so a county of 25,000 is officially a news desert. Given the degree that CNHI has staff whacks and its quarterly furloughs, no way Weatherford is filling all the vacancy out of its coverage.

No idea if Jim Moser has toyed with expanding Jacksboro's coverage into Mineral Wells or not. All he has to do is print weekly, and grab the Mineral Wells, Mineral Wells ISD, and Palo Pinto County legals away from the Democrat.

Theoretically, you'd get the Mineral Wells Chamber to help on a subscription drive and get, say, 500 people to precommit.

Weekly paper, 10-12 pages, or if you get the ads, eventually, semiweekly at 8 pages per? You can make a profit on that. Run a joint biz card directory with your other papers in that area, Moser.

Peter Principle or something in Sulphur Springs

So, the News-Telegram hired a managing editor in June 2017.

Less newspaper experience than I. Half of it explicitly listed as advertorial writing, on the writing and editing.

Less desktop publishing skill than me, both on speed and on design quality.

And a control freak. (I can be at times, but not like that.)

Other issues.

At a dysfunctional place, where the previous managing editor / general manager had somewhat let things slack off in the past, as well as exhibited intermittent communication skill usage, from what I can tell.

I am out of there now, Southern Newspapers has sold that paper to Moser, and the publisher in Paris who pushed for her to be hired, along with the possible reasons he pushed for her to be hired, is no longer in Paris, in part due to a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Well, enough butt-kissing. I'm past the two-year mark in my current position and moving on down the road. This time, the move worked out well enough, although overworked I am. And I'm not working for the control freak, nor dealing with the mess of a fellow publisher possibly committing illegalities, like last time I moved, back to Marlin and Moser, nor either company that hired and tolerated either person. (That's not to mention Moser selling Marlin to Dennis and Theresa Phillips, who surely will finish destroying it soon. More here. Interestingly enough, last month, I got a call from Marlin; didn't ask who it was from, but someone who thought my cell number was still the one to call. Also interestingly, I told her I hadn't been there in 4-5 years, which was actually too short for the span from when I was really there, but too long for the span of my brief return.)

Oh, after Moser bought the News-Telegram, she was eventually fired. Shock me.

Three years since Dennis Phillips and Jim Moser screwed me over

Three years ago, I "tried to go home again."

I had been at the Marlin Democrat longer than any other paper besides my nearly nine years at Today Newspapers in suburban Dallas.

In the summer of 2016, Brandi Chionsini of Granite Publications sold the Democrat and Rosebud News, with me as editor of the Democrat and publisher of both, to Jim Moser of Moser Community Media.

Well, Jim had his own person in mind as editor and publisher, and it wasn't me. So, enter Hank Hargrave. I landed on my feet as editor of The Light and Champion in Center, Texas, so I didn't die.

Hank stayed about a year, and found commuting from Normangee too much. So, off he went.

That was just about the time that The Light and Champion downsized, the publisher there decided to become a publisher-editor (and falsely claimed I was editorializing in a news story, and I later found out just how wingnut he was), and sent me out the door. (I did, to be fair, get a couple of weeks of severance pay.)

This would have been at the time, or shortly after, Hargrave left Marlin.

Did Moser call me then? No.

Instead, Hearne-Franklin publisher Dennis Phillips, a person no stranger at all to alcohol, and probably not to wacky tobaccy, either, from what I know, was made publisher over Marlin and Rosebud as well.

And, proceeded to commit felonies in advertising sales, per what I've heard. (Credit or debit card abuse is a felony no matter the amount, and charging people with credit or debit cards on file for ads they did not run and did not authorize would fit the definition, Dennis.)

OK, I didn't know any of this coming there. I didn't know that, under the excuse "that text won't fit in that ad size" (sometimes that IS true, sometimes not) he would upsize ads without contacting the customer first.

I didn't know his and Theresa's daughter was the bookkeeper at all four papers, to clean up any messes.

As a result of all of the above, I didn't know that I couldn't trust the financials Jim provided me, courtesy of Dennis. They were tight as is. They were lies in reality.

(This also sets aside that the ad salesperson had been getting paid as contract labor, and that Theresa was allegedly horning in on some accounts she was landing. The former is definitely unethical, possibly illegal; the second is "just" unethical.)

So, presumably, enough people had gotten tired of Dennis that they begged Jim to hire anybody else. So he called me.

OK, a couple of weeks in, he's yelling at me for not producing magic on ad sales. Well, Jim, Dennis had 18 months to crap all over the place, and Rome wasn't built in a day.

Anyway, I sold a few ads myself. One, I gave a deal on a 6-month placement for a business card in the business review.

A day later, Moser's yelling at me about that.

"We sell to the rate card."

Really? I later found a flyer from Dennis that had a "half-off blowout sale" three months earlier in January. So, you're either ignorant of what he did or else lying. Given how long Dennis has worked for you, given that he allegedly had an ownership stake in Hearne that was going to go to Marlin as well, and given that he's likely done such sales before in Hearne ....

Let's not forget that Dennis, Theresa, or darling daughter snitched to you on this, too.

Let's add in that the Marlin office was a shambles and that there was no computer for me the day I got there, and that Dennis "offered" to have me build the paper in Hearne. No chance, Jack. No way I was going to sit under his thumb and eyeballs, and if the term publisher means anything, then it means that at least.

In all of this, I suspect that you, Jim, were either hoping I would get stuck in a lease and have to knuckle under, or something like that, or else that I would eat the lease for my apartment or something and you'd tell the community that you had tried.

Well, because my short-term landlord was one of the people who'd reportedly been credit or debit card abused by Dennis, he got his ownership company to let me out of my lease no harm no foul other than losing the deposit.

So, it was bye-bye. You're going to claim I quit.

I still claim you fired me.

Thank doorknobs I'm not still there, though. Reportedly, Dennis is expanding or has expanded the ownership stake he had in Hearne/ Franklin, Marlin/Rosebud and Cameron/Rockdale. He might even be taking them over. 

I would throw up in my mouth if Dennis Phillips were my company owner. I would then puke that sloppy seconds on him.

A part two is ahead.

Dallas Morning News not a "top 10"

I don't read everything in Editor and Publisher's roundup of headlines, but I do hit a fair bit. 

And, its piece on COVID-related circ declines was certainly of interest. The full story, at the British Press-Gazette, had several items of interest. One, beyond circ declines, caught my eye.

So, the Dallas Morning News, aka the Snooze, has a smaller circ than the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, even though the Dallas half of the Metroplex is as big as ALL the Twin Cities? Wow. 

 That's just sad.

A LESS THAN 10 PERCENT adhole at the Morning News

 A week ago, I blogged about how the Dallas Morning News, aka the Snooze, had a 10-percent or so adhole in its issue the Thursday before that.

Today? Even worse. 

Despite MORE obits than the week before (and I count obits as part of the paid adhole), LESS THAN 10 PERCENT.

By my quick eyeballs, an even three pages on a 34-page paper.

What makes this even worse?

In today's world, if the Snooze still insists on printing this issue, it should not be distributed where I live. 

I live in the north exurban Metromess on the west side of I-35.

In other words, Fort Worth StartleGram territory.

What the hell the Snooze is even doing out here I have zero idea.

As I said last week, Belo's got more to worry about than A.H. Belo's Confederate past. With no papers outside the Snooze, Al Dia and anything else Dallas-based, and having hived off the digital marketing department ...

What's left there?

Their alleged paywall (third shot at doing one) is leaky, if it's even on half the time.

Facebook group pretending to be newspaper: Been there, done that

 I remember a Facebook group in Marlin running rumor as fact, but NOTHING like what is reportedly happening in Beaver Falls and Beaver Township, Pennsylvania.

I had a pair of regular weekly papers in a county of less than 25,000 that did a reasonable job of actual news reporting. It's a shame that the paper there, in a county of 170K, was sold to Craphouse.

The rest of the story is totally unsurprising, even though the paper says it's hiring two new staff.

When in Marlin and Falls County, I probably ran three or four op-ed columns that shot down the worst of the rumors. Problem is that, there's sometimes solid info on such a site. The real problem is that when the actual newspaper reports a story and a fair chunk of the populace doesn't want to accept it, and then spins new rumors. Like police in Chippewa Township, I've been accused of being part of a conspiracy.

That then said, we had plenty of bad cops in Marlin. But, the conspiracy thinking on the Facebook group wasn't just about policing matters.

A 10 percent adhole at the Dallas Morning News

 And, on a Thursday, not a Monday paper (if Belo is still publishing the Snooze in print seven days a week).

Yes, you read that right — a 10 percent adhole on its March 25 issue, a week ago. That's on Belo's normal 34-page run on Thursdays. And, as usually with papers of any size, it counts obits as part of the adhole. 

They only had one-quarter page of obits. Still, a full page would have pushed the ad margin to, what? A whopping 12.5 percent?

With no other papers left besides the stable in Dallas, and with the digital marketing division now theoretically walled off, the "Rock of Truth" has truth to worry about far beyond A.H. Belo's Confederate past.

And yes, I know today's date, and no, this is no joke. 

The big question is, since investors forced the hiving off of the digital marketing division, how long before somebody either forces a sale or else swoops in? With all the other papers they sold in the past, Belo probably still has some cash reserves that would make it a tempting takeover target.