A Today Newspapers blast from the past

Today Newspapers was a group of suburban Dallas newspapers, where I worked several years, that closed during the Great Recession. Competition with a five-day daily with crap for editorial content but bullshitting about circ numbers, combined with some stupid ownership and management decisions and the Great Recession itself, did us in.

Well, my first couple of years there, in addition to a news editor for each paper in our group, we also had a sports editor for the whole group who did about half or so of the total sports coverage, in combo with us individually. 

He was Brian Porter. I saw his face on this piece, about him going into the world of, if not full pink slime, then semi-pink slime, journalism at the Rocky Mountain Voice. And, per the Colorado Press Association announcing him as a board of directors member, it is the same guy.

I was led to all of this by a new Substack I follow. A number of members objected to what appeared to be a conflict of interest with Porter running that organization, which is a specific advocacy-based site. But, then, a bigger issue came up. RMV is not a CPA member, and org bylaws say he needs to be, to be its president.

Porter did resign the CPA board presidency. But, if he had more than six months left in his term, would he have? (That said, if it's like TPA, it was probably a one-year deal anyway.)

Brian Freaking Porter. Per the CPA announcement of him joining the board, I see how he got out there — the luck of being with a major newspaper group and wanting to go to that location. I'm envious of the luck; my attempts to get out west, albeit in a place more to my interest than Fort Morgan would be, have all failed.