How much does the Texas Press Assn get paid to push PR releases?

 Because this one, just by the first paragraph, is a doozy:

Austin, Texas – Rather than raising venture capital (VC) to finance his tech startup, Michael Ramirez has opted to list his home for sale to generate funds. A marketing SaaS company founded in 2017, Evisio is a search engine optimization platform designed to streamline the SEO process and improve search rankings for users of all skill levels.

Given the full story, to me, re Evisio, this is definitely "buy an ad." In a sense, the story is nice, not just "nice," as a feature story. It's also selection bias — have other people tried this and failed? An investigative news piece might find that out. Even a non-investigative feature piece might find it out by asking him where he got the idea.

And, I hope TPA got its cash up front, rather than a slice of a mortgage.

I use a lot of TPA's guest columns, especially if they're about serious stuff like National Child Abuse Prevention Month. (I use about one-third of Texas 2036's stuff, and I've become less and less interested in what the George Bush Republicans have to say overall.)

Hypocrisy alert, Dan Froomkin world

 Dan Froomkin blared on Thursday the actual headline of "Political reporters encourage DeSantis to cheat."

What's up is that Froomkin is butt-hurt that national stenos aren't distinguishing between DeSantis' PAC and his Super PAC.

If he called it reporter stenography or laziness, I'd be with him. And he's right on the ever-tighter PAC-Super PAC "coordination."

Yes, it's Fox, but Warmonger Joe Biden's Super PAC isn't exactly clean of dark money.

To put it another way? Despite the likes of Ballot-Access News calling out Mother Jones for getting campaign finance law wrong vis-a-vis No Labels, and The Atlantic printing the current electoral cycle's tired, old and certainly false tropes about how a vote for Cornel West is a vote for Donald Trump, I see nothing about stuff like this on Froomkin's site.

And under his headline rubrics, MoJo and The Atlantic are "encouraging the Democratic National Committee to cheat."

In essence, Froomkin strikes me as a one-man band semi-parallel to Media Matters for America or similar, the guy working the refs for the #BlueAnon half of duopoly media on election reporting.

A 33 percent adhole in Denton sounds good, right?

 The June 17-18 Denton Record Chronicle had that on 30 pages, if I remember my ad count and page count correctly.

Just one thing. 70 percent of those were frequency rate ads for businesses saying "Vote for Me" in the Best of Denton or whatever exactly the paper's annual contest is.

Whether a quasi-metro paper, a quasi-metro trying to look like a community paper or a community paper, I've  NEVER seen a paper do this. (I hadn't looked as closely at the Wrecked Chronic on this in previous years, I'll admit.) They HAVE to be on frequency rates as this was at least the third week in a row for them to run, if not more than that.

But, even at a big discount, are you THAT desperate? I guess so.

It may say something about the city of Denton, for both better and worse, as well as the Wrecked Chronic.

That said, throw out all those ads (and the page count they generate) and it was 3 1/4 pages of ads on what would have been either 18 or 20 pages. Even on just 18 pages, that's still below 20 percent.

Of course, if you got rid of running six days worth of comics and various puzzles in a weekly newspaper, you'd have 3 1/4 pages of ads on, say, 12 pages of print. That's almost 30 percent.

Of course, nobody this side of being a true idiot would pay Bill Patterson $2.50 or whatever for that. Nor would KERA be half as interested in acquiring that. (And, why are you anyway, and are you paying attention to the Trib, and between this and WRR are you biting off more than you can chew?)

A&M shoots itself in journalism foot (and again); Trib raises eyebrows on edits

The Aggies wanted to revive their J-school, which went belly-up a few years ago. So, they decided to hire alumna, and Houston native, Kathleen McElroy away from the Tea-Sippers in Austin.

Until the mouth-breathers got word of a Black woman who used to work at the New York Times running Aggie Pride journalism. Then Texas Scorecard started a lynch mob about her alleged DEI-ing. 

And, then, Aggie leadership, starting from the top down in College Station, including, it seems, the Board of Regents, and definitely an interim dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, José Luis Bermúdez, essentially decided to dirk her. The Trib has details at that link. After McElroy agreed to, under some pressure, have the job description changed to make it a non-tenure track position, the Gag Me Aggies changed it AGAIN.

There is stuff missing from the piece, though. As in, didn't the Trib try to get A&M System Chancellor John Sharp (Rethuglican in Democrap drag, still?) to comment? Or College Station President M. Katherine Banks? So what if they no-comment you. Shame 'em, if it does any shaming.

Update, July 21: Banks has resigned! She said "negative press has become a distraction." What a KAREN. And, she's not the only Karen in College Station. John Sharp is, too, because the A&M SYSTEM that released this is his baby:

The A&M System said in a statement that Banks told faculty leaders this week that she took responsibility for the “flawed hiring process.” The statement said “a wave of national publicity” suggested McElroy “was a victim of ‘anti-woke’ hysteria and outside interference in the faculty hiring process.”

Fuck off.

Sadly, as I said on Twitter, there's a possibility the System's regents try to replace Banks with a real wingnut, and given that statement, that would not at all surprise me.

==

New update, July 23: To put it bluntly, per this new Trib story, Banks reportedly is some kind of a racist, overarchingly intervened in the hiring process, and essentially forged, or had someone else forge, a signature. That's all according to Hart Blanton, head of the department of journalism and communications and the person whose signature was forged.

Otherwise, it looks like Bermúdez is kind of being hung out to dry, or else is dumb enough to sign up for that voluntarily. 

The update story also notes that Bermudez is stepping down as interim dean to head back to a teaching-only faculty spot. Sharp et al will likely look for a winger to run the College of Arts and Sciences.

And, per people warning about Texas (and other anti-DEI-ing states) having problems getting new faculty? A shoe is dropping. With that, I note that McElroy added that "nothing has changed" since her own undergrad days in College Station. Shock me.

Update July 21 from a weekly office email newsletter. The A&M Faculty Senate's executive committee says it wants more transparency in the hiring process and mentioned outside interference. I don't know if they're referring to mouthbreathers like the Rudder Association interfering or they're parroting Sharp's news release and claiming "woke groups" interfered. (It IS Sharp's release at bottom line.) The former is surely more likely, and looking at an earlier update I posted, yeah, that's clearly the case. but it could be either one in these days. As for the mouthbreathers, given that their namesake, when A&M prez, moved the Aggies away from an an all-male college, as well as moving it away from a quasi-military institute, he might not agree with them.

Meanwhile, the Chronic has also weighed in, but its piece doesn't even mention Banks, let alone Sharp, and obviously doesn't try to get comment from either one.

Update, Aug. 28: Did this play any factor in the Trib's recent layoffs? I mean, A&M IS a "sponsor."

Update, Sept. 25: The Observer has a short first-person profile from McElroy, back with the Tea Sippers.

The StartleGram is no longer a seven-day daily

 Not in print, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is not

June 23, I saw an issue at one of the Denton library branches. It said: "Friday-Saturday, June 23-24." In other words, the StartleGram now has a pre-weekend bulldog issue. (I know "bulldog" is technically, in the past, a Saturday-Sunday weekender, but it's the word that works here.) And, it's not like it's printing a separate "three-star" for Denton, just 30 miles up the road from Cowtown.

And, even with the two days combined, it was 24 percent ads at 28 pages, not counting paid obits, of which there weren't that many.

That said, as I noted here a month or so ago, it should get rid of its Monday paper, if anything. The most recent one I eyeballed had a SEVEN percent adhole.