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.

Streaming services gutting TV more and more

 Back in 2019, I had one blog post, then a follow-up, refudiating claims that teevee was about to face anywhere near the future financial problems of newspapers.

The initial post was based on a comment on Quora by a local-level TV programming engineer claiming "we're doing fine." I had multiple links showing local TV news viewership, a prime source of local TV ad dollars, was already declining. I had another link showing the age demographic for local TV news watching wasn't that much different than for newspapers.

In the follow-up, I noted how job cuts have affected local TV news broadcasting.

Meanwhile, national TV has had a new threat arise since then: streaming by Netflix and others. (COVID has brought yet another possible threat — movie streaming. Yeah, it's primarily a deal for movie theaters, but if it jacks movie viewing higher than before, that's extra personal entertainment time that has to be lost by another entertainment source.)

I update these ideas because streaming has come to pro sports.

And, not just any pro sport but the NFL.

And, and not just any streaming outlet but Amazon, otherwise known as Yellow Satan.

So, production engineer guy? Stop whistling in the dark.

A.H. Belo is getting woke?

 The parent company of the Dallas Morning News, known here as the Snooze, of course, and parent company of not much else any more,  wants to officially rename itself because of its founder's Confederate Army past. Wiki, though, doesn't mention relatives' slave-owning past.

A renaming of a company like Belo, though, is like a renaming of a company like, oh, Monsanto, Exxon or Philip Morris. This is putting lips on a pig when it won't address that, through things at the Snooze such as an editorial page editor who used to work at the Shrub Bush Library, it remains part of the problem in contributing to factors that continue to contribute to adjuncts to racism, at least, today.

Nor will it address, per the likes of a Jim Schutze, its news coverage's continuing sense of paternalism toward South Dallas. 

Or real problems, like not selling newspaper ads.