Once again, not getting the Gainesville Register

 Gainesville, Texas, approximately 17,000, is the county seat of Cooke County, approximately 45,000.

The paper is CHNI. Nuff ced?

Current editorial staff is an in-house staff writer, and a regional editor, with originally a sports background, running three CNHI papers. Weatherford is about 75 miles away, generally southwest. Cleburne is about 45 miles southeast of it. Weatherford has gotten so bad that a weekly halfway between it and Fort Worth started an online-only competitor. Nuff ced?

The only in-depth sports coverage the paper had in the entire 24-25 school year was of the football state championship game for Muenster, at the western edge of the county. Muenster has its own newspaper, let us note!

So far, this year the same, until the last two weeks, when some freelancer has reported on one game each week from two non-Muenster smaller schools.

But, Gainesville is nearly 40 percent of the county's population and you can't get anybody to cover Gainesville high school sports?

OK.

That may also say something about Gainesville sports fandom, I'll admit. 

Hearst vs Alden: The Snooze between the devil and the deep blue sea

 With Hearst, already owning Houston, San Antonio, Austin (I forgot that they bought the Stateless earlier this year, somehow) Laredo, Beaumont and Midland, along with a few yet-smaller properties, is its purchase of the Dallas Snooze good for journalism in Texas? Michael Hardy discussed that a little while back at Texas Monthly.

My thoughts?

It is the tough issue above, tougher for the Snooze's employees yet, and I'll get more below.

I can say that, at a minimum, it's better than vulture capitalist Alden owning the Snooze, Michael. On the other hand, especially seeing how the SA Express-News is treated as not much more than an appendage of the Chronic, and suspecting that's started happening at the Stateless, and knowing that it's surely happened to Beaumont, which is otherwise in the crapper, I can understand worries about how other papers outside Houston will lose, or have already lost, individual identities.

But, that's a lesser issue than the future of journalism. Even if the Chronic itself hasn't been gutted, the Stateless acquisition shows Hearst is no white knight overall:

Some journalists at Hearst’s Texas papers have a less rosy view of their employer. When Hearst bought the Statesman this spring, it declined to ratify the contract that the paper’s union had signed with Gannett just a few months earlier. Hearst and the union are in negotiations over a new contract; in the meantime, the company has laid off the paper’s copy editors, eliminated job protections, and cut some employee benefits. In May, the Austin News Guild filed an unfair labor practices charge against Hearst with the National Labor Relations Board.

I mean, yes, with more and more of a truly digital first world? Those copy editing positions are dead in the water. Do you want to pick up a reporter's notebook or microcasette player?

But? Some are still needed, and laying them ALL off sure as hell looks like union-busting. It does so to the unionized in Dallas, and at Hearst papers elsewhere:

In July, the union issued a statement on X expressing alarm at the paper’s sale: “The experiences of our colleagues at other Hearst papers have left us with concerns that we look forward to addressing with Hearst leadership.” This was followed by an open letter to Hearst from unionized journalists in California, Connecticut, New York, and Texas urging the company to refrain from “intimidation tactics and inappropriate discipline meant to scare journalists into silence or complacency.”

Ugh.

An additional problem is that Hearst is privately owned, so it can say it needs to bust unions for the bottom line, but, unless somebody leaks some financials, who can tell, and there's no shareholder pressure anyway.

As an additional note, online personal friend Chris Tomlinson, author of "Tomlinson Hill" and other books, is at the Chronic — and by extension, at the Expressed-News. And maybe at the Stateless now. His social media doesn't comment on the acquisition. 

==

As for where we stand?

Per D Mag's Brian Reinhart, Sept. 23 has been called for a shareholder vote. Bob Decherd may need to do some uphill sledding to round up two-thirds of both classes of shareholders, but Alden has much more of such sledding to do.  Reinhart explains details here, including how the vultures at Alden sneakly bought just under 10 percent of Class A shares before making their bid.

At Nieman Lab, Josh Benton, who used to work in this part of the world, including at the Snooze weighs in on other things, including why Decherd does NOT have a "fiduciary duty" to accept Alden's higher offer. He can, like a local government looking at the big picture on bids for products or services, go with a different offer if he believes it's in the best interests of the company, since the Snooze / Belo are NOT a Delaware company. 

He also notes that the Snooze, no longer A.H. Belo, but now DallasNews Corporation while it's been gutted enough, has been gutted less than Alden's franchise. Look at the Denver Post as the prime example.

==

More on my personal thoughts? For Decherd and other Dealey family remnants owning any part of the Snooze? Schadenfreude.

This is a paper that got luck dropped into its hands twice at the tail end of the previous century. 

The first was, three years after MediaSnooze Group, eventually acquired by Digitally Fucked-Up Media, both of which had their own bankruptcy problems later, spun off the Dallas Times Herald to a friend of MediaSnooze founder Deano Singleton. The Snooze bought that carcass three years later.

The other was when the Fort Worth StartleGram, under its then owners, ended circulation west of Abilene about the same time, and the Snooze filled in that void. In the middle 1990s, you could still get it in the "little Texas" part of New Mexico, at least at stores or racks; I don't know about home delivery.

Anyway, beyond that, by the time I was in the Metromess, it long had the attitude that its shit didn't stink. 

And, it made dumb, dumb biz decisions. Like the CueCat — which was basically ripped off by MediaSnooze! Or selling off its portion of Cars.com (or so I thought at the time). And, during these years, it kept selling off other papers, like in Providence, Rhode Island, or Riverside, California, in California's Inland Empire. 

Side note on the Cars.com link? I have never understood why Decherd didn't go further down the road toward a full JOA with the StartleGram, especially before McLatchKey entered bankruptcy during COVID. I explicitly wondered about this in 2017.

==

Now, how does this play out in the longer term?

Beyond Hearst? Craphouse (sic), the half of the post-merger company that is the tail wagging the dog of the new Gannett, owns El Paso, Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo, Abilene and Corpus Christi, and continues to implode. In other words, outside of Odessa, two chains own all dailies in West and West Central Texas, and Hearst making a bid for Odessa and a consolidation with Midland wouldn't surprise me. CNHI, a chain that's the crappiest one not owned by a hedge fund, owns many newspapers in Texas that were dailies before COVID. It's not quite imploding, but just falling apart more and more. 

The StartleGram is owned by hedge-fund controlled McClatchy, or McLatchKey, which also continues to implode.

Papers inside or near the Triangle, since, setting aside Cowtown, Hearst will now pretty much control all points? Temple remains privately owned by the Mayborn family and won't be sold. Waco and Bryan-College Station are both part of Lee Enterprises, whose flagship is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. They might sell.

Per a piece I wrote 10 months ago, if this David Hoffmann still owned, as of September 2025, a slice of the Snooze, since he also owns a slice of Lee, at least looking at Waco and BCS, if not far beyond that?  (As of of early September 2025, per this story, Hoffmann was now one of the top two Lee investors and was still trying to buy the company outright, and still owned his slice of the Snooze.)

In the Valley? Hearst, if the price is right, might look to move further south from Laredo. It wouldn't need to buy everything, just one or another of Brownsville, Harlingen etc, and then use its growing clout. (The partial carcass of FreeDumb Communications owns both those plus McAllen.)

That leaves East Texas, east of where CNHI trails off, as more competitive for now.

Also, a side note to journalism union hater Jim Schutze? STFU.

Publishers' Auxiliary fellates the Roswell (Daily) Record

Not the one in Georgia. 

The one in New Mexico, beloved by conspiracy theorists.

Lead story in Pub Aux's July issue? 

Touts local news production with "Roswell UFO controversy was a local story."

Well, today, there is no controversy.

There IS a lot of grifting by the Beck family ownership.

Re both of those issues? 

Per the "about" on its website, the Record is like Jill Stein trying to pretend to not be an antivaxxer while actually being one. In this case, it's trying to pretend not to push 1947 UFO conspiracy theory while actually doing so.

In July 1947, something streaked out of the sky, hitting the ground outside of Roswell, New Mexico, beginning years of ongoing speculation as to what the object was. According to initial information provided to the Roswell Daily Record by the Roswell Army Air Field, the startling headlines claimed that the military had recovered a flying saucer from a nearby ranch.

Overnight, the story changed from a flying saucer to a weather balloon, and over the ensuing years, that explanation morphed into a military high-altitude surveillance program. Over decades of conspiracy theories that the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public interest and fascination with this story.

Wrong. 

And, Beck daughter has a reason to peddle this, as did daddy, assuming he did, too.

The paper owns its own UFO store.

Of course, here's the reality.

And, I knew that reality long ago. I also know that, 25 years ago, Roswell boosters were talking about when the city would hit 50,000. Never happened. Population's been basically flat since 1990 and Farmington has just about caught it, while the Farmington metro area is much bigger.

Not that Teri Saylor at PubAux will tell you that. About halfway through:

In 2022, on the 75th anniversary of the crash event, CBS News reported the debate is far from settled, and “for decades, journalists, authors, documentary film crews and others fascinated by the incident have unearthed and publicized countless bits of information and artifacts o that time.”

Ugh. No skeptical organizations or individuals are quoted anywhere. 

But wait, it gets worse:

On the newspaper’s website, Beck wrote that “over decades of conspiracy theories, the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public’s interest and fascination with this story.”

Saylor doesn't question that, nor does she mention the grifting involved. Well, she did mention that above two paragraphs:

Both the Roswell Daily Record and the Morning Dispatch are trademarked, and their UFO crash stories and images cannot be reproduced without permission or by paying royalties to Record Publishing, the parent company.

To be more accurate, she doesn't mention the ethics of a newspaper promoting an untrue conspiracy theory off of which it's grifting.

She and PubAux should be ashamed of themselves. 

But they won't be. 

Why were politicos speaking at the Texas Press Association convention?

Specifically, per page 6 of the July Texas Press Messenger, I'm talking about state Sen. Charles Perry, who was given the unchallenged open mic time to promote the water plan constitutional amendment he authored.

Beyond the actual problems with Perry's amendment (and it has them, and I'll be voting against), is the ethics problem. NO politico should get free, unchallenged airtime at ANY state's — or national — newspaper convention on a specific political issue.

Period. 

Time to dog on CNHI again

 Because it's so fun.

I thought that, about 2 years ago, it had consolidated its North/North Central/East/East Central Texas (but NOT Deep East Texas) printing at Palestine, as in Gainesville, Greenville and Weatherford were all there.

Well, either I heard wrong, or else the UnitedHealth of newspaper chains has done something stupider yet.

Gainesville now prints in Norman, which CNHI doesn't even own. Weatherford prints way down in Huntsville!

Per terms of mileage in today's newspaper printing world, Norman is only 120 miles from Gainesville. It's about a flat 200 from Weatherford, a bit less, but not tremendously less, than Huntsville.

The main thing is a blown economies of scale issue.

Both are semiweekly, but Gainesville is Tues/Sat while Weatherford is Wed/Sat. Change the midweek print day of one of them, maybe? 

Then I thought maybe they're partnering Weatherford with their Cleburne paper?

Nope, it's still triweekly, at Tues/Thu/Sat. So is Greenville. Neither one should be, arguably, in today's world. But, if you are doing that, still fix Weatherford or Gainesville.

This comes to mind because all four have the same publisher, without, I think, local "general managers" for each (don't get me started), and they have a different policy on inserts, at least new ones.

Weatherford wants a prepay; Gainesville didn't ask. 

Yes, Facebook IS a publisher

At least it is in Brazil, where that country's Supreme Court ruled recently that social media companies are legally liable for user posts if they don't take them down, even if they don't have a court order.

In other words? Facebook IS a publisher. Just like at newspapers I run.

I've argued in this space and elsewhere more than once with blanket defenders of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. I have said that it needs to be updated, not junked, but they still don't accept that, nor the media principle behind it. 

Oh, and related to that? Zuckerberg aka Hucksterman will surely try to gut or end-run this ruling, based on his past US history on broadly similar issues. 

TPA contest awards thoughts

 First, I apparently, contra an old post, misunderstood the configuration of current divisions of semiweekly and weekly papers. I have no complaints about anybody I was running against.

Now, the actual awards? 

Yes, and not just in my division, as far as observations on judging, which I have long questioned. (I did it for another state's newspaper association contest once, long ago, and I'll admit it's not fun.) I also have a non-judging observation about one winner in another division, in one category.

I entered more categories than I have at any time previous, at my current position, and still just took one first and one fourth.

I didn't even place, not even fourth, in sports coverage, despite one of my two entries being the the issue of the local public school winning a state football title. (With the other paper I run, I won that category two years ago with a volleyball team finishing state runner-up.) Since I didn't even finish fourth, I won't have any judges' comments on why.

SMH.

Now, the other division and judging? Two levels above me, in sports photography, the picture TPA highlighted on its slideshow? It was simply of a high school pitcher, on the mound, pitching. It wasn't even as creative as one of my shots, or one of my stringers, to get the ball 2-3, or 5-6, inches out of his hand. Really?

Then, because I love dogging on CNHI?

Gainesville won the news writing award in its circulation class, even though one of its two entries, and the one displayed, had less than the full story.

That was about the Black Lives Matter-related organization, PRO Gainesville. At its last march, it did NOT have a parade permit, walked in a street that's also a state highway, and got its three leaders arrested.

After losing in county court at law, it appealed. ACLU of Texas then got involved and made it a political issue. The Gainesville Register never reported then one big issue, nor after they lost that appeal and appealed again to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, nor after THAT, when, with ACLU national now involved, they did a Hail Mary to the US Supreme Court. That "big issue," which I noted more than once in news stories and in columns, is that the ACLU's own pamphlet, available as a PDF online, says you can't march in a street, without possibility of arrest, if you don't have a permit.

I tweeted both state and national ACLU about that as well. No response.

(Any civil liberties organization donations I've made in the last 15 years have gone to the Center for Constitutional Rights, and this only confirms that.)

Sigh. 

There IS NO First Amendment right to media funding

That's why, per Axios, the Public Broadcasting System and a Minnesota PBS station, and per Corey Hutchins, National Public Radio and member stations in Colorado, are suing over Trump's executive order cutting of public broadcast media funding.

Now, per the Axios story, and Hutchins', cobbling together the details on both, Trump's executive order does reference my header, near the start of the order, before going on to call both organizations, and the funding parent, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, biased.

The question is, what burden of proof, beyond my caveat and Trump's, lies with the plaintiffs?

If the suits have breach of contract and/or executive arrogation of legislative powers in their language, they're probably in better standing.

As for biased? Public broadcasting has done no better job than MSM broadcast journalism on covering third parties, Gaza, the Russia-Ukraine war and other things, so this non-duopoly leftist says maybe they are biased, just not in the way Trump claims. As for biased? PBS whoring itself to the David H. Koch Fund for Science has led to its pulling punches on things like the climate crisis.

Related? I recently finished Steve Oney's "On Air," a very interesting look at NPR, from the start, and including its Reagan-era funding reduction, and how they tried to handle that, which was less than totally productively, but without suing the government.

Euphemism creep and the media

 

First, "euphemism creep", or the "euphemism treadmill," per Steven Pinker is a real thing. James McWhorter has also written much about it.

It's when a euphemism replaces a no-longer acceptable term, but soon enough becomes no longer acceptable itself.

Think "handicapped" being replaced by "disabled," then that becoming not acceptable and it being replaced by "differently abled." Some day in the not too distant future, because of the word "differently," that will be replaced as well.

This is a field with enough to mine that I am going to write about this on various spots, including my philosophy and critical thinking blog. But, there as here, I'll use the same starting point — Substacker Corey Hutchins talking about how different media outlets in Colorado struggle (or maybe "struggle" with scare quotes intended) on how to talk about "people who aren't supposed to be here," or if I need scare quotes inside that, "people who aren't 'supposed' to be here."

Or, per old friend Brains, who used it non-disparagingly? "Ill Eagles." 

Here, it's not just ground-level, but, in media, an official style issue, as the Associated Press long ago said both "illegal immigrant" and "illegal alien" aren't allows.

I agree for sure with the word "alien." That said, quoting Hutchins, I disagree with the AP already trying to get ahead of euphemism creep three years ago.

“We don’t use the terms illegal immigrant, unauthorized immigrant, irregular migrant, alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented (except when quoting people or documents that use these terms),” the AP wrote. “Many immigrants and migrants have some sort of documents, but not the necessary ones.”

As I said in a comment to Hutchins, why not just add "allegedly" in front of "undocumented immigrants"? 

Per that Shitter link, the AP does offer alternatives. But? Most of them are kind of cumbersome, which undercuts the usefulness of language.

The AP also says that if an official statement has "illegal immigrants" and it's being quoted, quote as is — no bowdlerizing.

However, that's print media. Political interviews, or everyday oral communication, political or otherwise, the issue is not so avoidable.

And, it will get politicized within the media. The story Hutchins writes is about a Fox station in Colorado Springs, which actually wrestled with the issue and edited a website headline. Fox nationally on Fox News? Probably still using "illegal immigrant" and much of its staff not caring. For the likes of Newsmax? Absolutely.

Also, per the authors I cited at the top of the page, this issue tends to get politicized. And, it's usually "conservatives" vs "liberals." Setting aside L/libertarians and some Green types who claim to be neither right nor left, the politicized polarity also ignores friendly skeptical non-liberal leftists.

And, it gets politicized within the media, not just this phrase, but larger issues and related ones.

In my first comment, Hutchins noted that I had used the word "roundup" and he had edited it out of his post, when thinking about using it, as dehumanizing. I noted that I've seen "roundup" in places like a "kindergarten roundup" at a local school district.

I also commented, in a short bit lower in his post, about a Denver TV news anchor wearing a tie from a Soviet journalist to make a statement about the Russia-Ukraine War. I first noted the fact that, pre-invasion, Zelensky was already restricting press freedom in Ukraine. I then referenced Gaza. Hutchins didn't refer to either one.

And, with that, it strikes me that he's probably framing this in a politicized sense, and within the conservative-liberal axis, or, within the two-party duopoly axis.

To me, right-thinking (NO pun, intended or unintended!) people in general should step outside that box. And, media shouldn't step into that box in general. 

(It's also a reminder that we don't have leftist media in the US.)

This leads to another issue, even if not technically euphemistic.

Let us take the "word" (that's a scare quote, not a reference quote, folks) "trans."

I don't use it. It's either a prefix missing a referent noun or adjective, or the first name of an old GM car.

We can talk about "transsexual" or "transgender." 

The final, big picture?

We all should move beyond language that's harmful, but at the same time:

• Recognize the euphemism treadmill is real;
• Avoid politicization;
• Accept we won't please everybody, including readers and listeners as members of the media;
• And, per Humpty Dumpty, never let language be the master. 

And, that's that.

Gainesville Register hits new low

I thought their regional editor, since they no longer have a local editor, has more brains than this, but I stand corrected.

In the ongoing saga of 235th District Court Judge Janelle Haverkamp, defense attorney Michael Lassiter's filing of a writ of habeas corpus for client Michael Newberry, district attorney John Warren signing off on that writ, visiting judge Lee Gabriel officially recommending to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that it order a new trial for Newberry, and Eighth Judicial Administrative District presiding judge David Evans ordering a mandatory recusal of Haverkamp from active and future criminal cases brought by Warren ...

Last week, county judge John Roane decided he had to row his oar.

He wrote a LONG open letter to all local media. The last two paragraphs not only threw Warren, and also County Attorney Ed Zielinski, under the proverbial bus, they had Roane at least approaching, if not sticking his toes over the border of, a certain legal issue.

The local radio station, which really doesn't do news reporting, posted the letter in full on its Facebook page an hour after it came out.

The local shopper-plus paper, which got the letter before its press deadline, unless that deadline has been moved up with a change in its printers, did not. (We will see if it runs this week.)

The CNHI-owned Register, currently a semiweekly in print?

It not only ran the letter in full, it also referenced it in a news story.

The Register does not have a local editor, and has not for almost a year. Instead, it has a regional editor overseeing the CNHI papers in Cleburne and Weatherford as well as Gainesville. Even before Sally Sexton took over Gainesville, she — and CHNI in general in this area — were stretched so thin that (Aledo) Community News owner Randy Keck started an online-only competitor to Weatherford.

The Register has a local staff writer, a Gainesville native in their first journalism job out of college with no journalism degree, whom the regional editor wouldn't allow to touch anything on the matters at hand.

There's additional issues, which happen when you have non-local editors.

There's a number of backstory issues behind Roane's letter, among them that his claims to be trying to mediate two sides aren't true, per comments that may be running around elsewhere. There's also backstory behind the county's would-be original legal contract for a law firm to write an amicus brief for Haverkamp. But, nobody is talking off the record to a rookie reporter, and don't have the relationship with a non-local editor to do that. I don't know if anybody is doing that with either the reporter or the owner of the shopper-plus.

Anyway, I am not linking to any Register coverage nor quoting from Roane's letter.

The decline of audited — and unaudited — circulation accuracy

 We all know in the print bureau that the old Audit Bureau of Circulation's newspaper audits have long ago gone by the boards, and that what counts as paid circulation is more and more a matter of framing and public relations.

That's true enough of a conventional newspaper with a second-class USPS permit.

But, what of a shopper, which was free, like most of them are, but gradually converted more and more of its ZIPs to paid and finished the process about 18 months ago?

I hear things about a "bulked-up" shopper in my area, which did exactly that. I would whack one-third off their circ claims now that they've gone paid. And, as far as I know, they're still on a third-class permit, so they don't have to run an annual postal statement in October on their pages.

RIP to Texas Tribune founder John Thornton

Per this piece, I didn't know that much about Thornton.

To start at the start? Please, get help for mental health needs. (Reading between the lines, it appears to be suicide, and one that perhaps had been looming for some time, sadly.)

On the professional side? This illustrates that philanthropy journalism isn't a savior.

Thornton was a venture/vulture capitalist. Graduated from a "citadel," if you will, for things like that — Stanford Graduate School of Business with an MBA. Worked at McKinsey. And, like many of the modern venture capitalists, though not Hucksterman or Peter Thiel, a techbro, by his investments.

People like him might back a "safe" general interest nonprofit online newspaper like the Trib, but they're not going to back, say, Jacobin. Or Counterpunch. Or Mint Press. 

And, per their political background, they'll be OK with their ventures pulling punches to appease some business interests, as the Trib has before, as I have written about.

Already at the five-year mark, in 2014, the Trib had ethics-type issues.

Jim Moore, former journalist, now political consultant, explains why the Texas Tribune's "pay to play" idea of "journalism," kind of like Politico but on a much broader front, is ethically wrong and more, in a four-part series. (Link from my original writing is dead.)

Arguably, rather than becoming more ethically responsible now that it's theoretically past its teething troubles, the Trib is worse, if anything. 

Moore notes this in Part Four:

In less than five years, the Texas Tribune has gone from being an exciting startup to a hypocritical, money-grubbing promotional operation wearing a coat of many colors that it wants desperately to convince everyone is actual journalism. But it is not. There is no reason to any longer take the Tribune seriously as a news organization. They simply cannot be trusted.

The big brains of the Texas Tribune were supposed to save journalism. Instead, they are busily speeding up its extinction.

And they ought to be ashamed.

Of course, they're not.

Much of its sellout is to largely right-wing big businesses, who make "donations" and in exchange get puff pieces about themselves and their industries. 

The type of businesses Thornton hobnobbed with and vulture capitalists with.

Hell, two years before that, Editor and Publisher has a great synopsis (dead link) of why they're not good for journalism. Three main points.

1. Their news coverage is restricted by wealthy donor interests and pressures. (E&P has specifics in the TT's case, re John Sharp/Texas A&M.) So, no "probing" journalism, if told not to. (That said, I've experienced that at for-profit papers, too.)

2. "Freeloading" by for-profit papers, with the possible result of further salary depression, etc. (We're going to see yet more of that with the Trib's new newsrooms in selected cities. The Waco Trib of Lee Enterprises will be fine with the Texas Trib starting some sort of site in Waco, as long as Lee's paper still gets Waco, Waco ISD and McLennan County legal notices.)

3. Back-scratching for friends. Evan Smith's $315K salary as the Trib's executive editor — in 2012! — has been mentioned by me before. I consider it out of line in general, especially since one of the Trib's "sponsors," Texas A&M, gets taxpayer money.

The first point is something I've seen coming down the point for some time. Rich funders of nonprofit papers, whether individuals or foundations, can steer these papers into boutique journalism, spike or lighten negative stories and more.  

With the Trib?

Especially when it comes to talking Earl, Black Gold, the Texas Tea? The Trib has always been light in the loafers about calling Big Oil to account, let alone following fellow light-in-the-loafers Politico to write something about climate change legal liabilities.

And, successful? As in profitable? Well, maybe. It depends on what metrics and how you analyze them, as we look at Evan Smith's hoorah piece, back in 2019.

OK, first, financials.

$10 million intake and $9.7 million expenses. Yes, you're in the black.

At 3 percent.

A total haul of $76 million over that decade?

How much of that haul is from your "sponsors" in what Moore called pay-to-play journalism? Or that, since that, you demonstrated was pay-to-pay with advertorial journalism?

Let's also not forget that in 2023, the Trib actually laid off people, canning 11 editorial staff.

We start internally, as Trib tries to spin its editorial staff gutting. It is worth noting that part of the cuts are on podcasts; print and digital-print media that "pivoted" to podcasts a few years ago, in yet another version of the tragedy of the commons, oversaturated the market.

The Austin Chronicle has two posts about the layoffs at the Texas Tribune. The first is a big one, for multiple reasons. It notes that, first of all, there will be no more prisons and criminal justice desk at the Trib. However, there are six new hires — none in editorial. All in either general development positions or directly in sponsorship.

Per what I've said elsewhere, the Trib doesn't go in depth on many issues, either. Take a good example of bad, or stereotyped, religion writing. There's no investigative journalism of their own, only what's partnered with Pro Publica.

 

Somehow, I doubt the Texas Press Association will hear from Sam Houston again

About 21 months ago, TPA's monthly newsletter, The Messenger, ran unadulterated, unedited and uncut, a column from the owner of the newspapers in Granbury, Azle and Springtown, about how he was merging the latter two and this would be so incredible.

Incredible, beyond TPA running the column as is, was the braggadocio — and worse — that was in it, as I noted at the time.

But, 21 months later, the Tri-County News (whose name was itself a bit of braggadocio) — is no more, per Austin Lewter's column on page 3 of the March Messenger. Per Austin's reflections in general, yes, rises in postal rates continue to have a bite. But, I don't think that's what happened here. Rather, he had a "unicorn" of sorts who relatively recently retired, and I think that, whether money, job details, a mix, or whatever, he couldn't really find a replacement, for whatever reason didn't really try to sell, and so just pulled the plug to focus on Granbury and Gatesville.

Update, April 4: Azle and Springtown have been resurrected, and Houston's old right-hand person, Kim Ware, is coming back out of the retirement she entered into before the closure. There's surely a backstory there. That said, this brings to light a problem with TPA's website — no search function.

Once again eff the Texas Press

 I DO NOT LIKE the switch made, already last year if not two years ago, to contest divisions in the Better Newspapers Contest.

My weekly newspapers should NOT NOT NOT be PUNISHED — and that's exactly what's happened — by being lumped not only with semiweeklies but

There's probably a reason you readvertised that position, Roswell

 Managing editor job, five-day daily. Kind of isolated, Western state. 

That doesn't reveal too much, as towns big enough to be small cities can be kind of isolated in any Western state due to population and climate controls on it out there.

So, I won't say more, so I don't alienate the publisher if this is read by that person. Well, sort of; hold on to that thought.

Job advertisement was on JournalismJobs in early June. Apparently nobody bit, or nobody good enough for their ask, or nobody cheap enough for their offer sheet or some combo of the above. (Job listing says that pagination as well as website content management experience is required, which means no pagination hub, and who knows how much help, to boot. Also weirdly, it uses a Siri-type app to do voice versions of all stories. Can't be for the visually impaired, as you have to see to hit the "play" button.)

So, it was readvertised a month or so later, early-mid July.

So, I applied, to kick the tires as much as anything. In addition to the notes above about a spot being advertised again, per not wanting to alienate the publisher, I told them in my cover letter and email that I knew more about the place than the typical out-of-state applicant, and hinted it was a fair chunk more, but didn't go into detail, lest I risk alienation.

I did not tell them that I also knew the previous ME had stuck only a year or just over.

Anyway, the publisher did make me a bit green with anger, not envy.

Said I needed clips along with cover letter and resume. I said I have a Google Docs link, open to public, at the end of the resume. Publisher said no bueno. 

So, with no more than medium effort, I gave them a police story about a drug and alcohol sales to minors sting, a column related to that, as no more than medium effort, and then a 5,000-word, or more, long feature story about the retirement of the previous priest at the Catholic church here. I wanted something that long deliberately.

Month later? Haven't heard back and I sent no queries. My tire kicking was not high-level interest even before the personal interaction.

==

And, what the hell. Let's name names.

It's .... the ....

Roswell Daily Record. Per the "about" on its website, it's like Jill Stein trying to pretend to not be an antivaxxer while actually being one. In this case, it's trying to pretend not to push 1947 UFO conspiracy theory while actually doing so.

In July 1947, something streaked out of the sky, hitting the ground outside of Roswell, New Mexico, beginning years of ongoing speculation as to what the object was. According to initial information provided to the Roswell Daily Record by the Roswell Army Air Field, the startling headlines claimed that the military had recovered a flying saucer from a nearby ranch.

Overnight, the story changed from a flying saucer to a weather balloon, and over the ensuing years, that explanation morphed into a military high-altitude surveillance program. Over decades of conspiracy theories that the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public interest and fascination with this story.

Wrong. 

The publisher, and owner, is the daughter of a long-term owner who died in 2018. AFAIK, it's the only paper they own.

And, Beck daughter has a reason to peddle this, as did daddy, assuming he did, too.

The paper owns its own UFO store.

Of course, here's the reality.

And, I knew that reality long ago. I also know that, 25 years ago, Roswell boosters were talking about when the city would hit 50,000. Never happened. Population's been basically flat since 1990 and Farmington has just about caught it, while the Farmington metro area is much bigger.

Basically, it's a High Plains/edge of desert community, that has, or it was when built, the largest mozzarella cheese plant in the US if not the world.  But climate change and water owed to Texas on the Pecos and no aquifer of note in the area will ding that. There's some oil there, but not like in the Permian. New Mexico Military Institute is the only other major or semi-major business driver.

Update, Feb. 15, 2025: Gee, that last ME (assuming you hired one) really spit the bit quickly if you're advertising anew on Journalism Jobs, six months or so after the readvertising last August of the original June advertisement.

Once again, the Gainesville Register

 I understand "slow news weeks."

I understand "slow news photography weeks."

But, really?

A college letter of intent signing, and not at Gainesville itself, but a lesser school district? And, not a major sport, but track and cross country? And a Division III NCAA school (that probably should be NAIA)? 

That was Feb. 11.

A few weeks ago, I noticed their latest cost-cutting.

They're not running weekend color comics as separate pages. Instead, one page of such is running on the back page of the regular paper. And, that's still with that issue normally being only 10 pages.

Media wrap: NJ.com goes print-silent, more LAT censorship

First, how does the largest paper, in the most densely populated state in the US, go print-silent? (And, other than possible gloating or to pick up readers and advertisers, why does the New York Times have its story about the New Jersey Star-Ledger paywall-unlocked?)

That said, seeing it unlocked is an eye-opener about the entire chain:

Its sister publication, The Jersey Journal, one of the earliest holdings in the Newhouse media family’s now-vast empire, will cease to exist in print or online, leaving Hudson County, N.J. — a hotbed for political corruption — without a daily newspaper. Three other affiliated papers, The Times of Trenton, The South Jersey Times and The Hunterdon County Democrat, will stop printing and offer only digital news.

Incredible.

But, not surprising.

The NYT goes on to note that the Star-Ledger's parent company is the Newhouse family's Advance, as one could guess from the online name of "NJ dot com." It references what it did in Alabama. And we know what it also did in NOLA, where Baton Rouge, under different ownership, wound up kicking the Times-Picayune ass and forcing a sale-merger.

On the other hand, this may have been inevitable:

In 2005, nearly 600,000 households bought The Ledger on Sundays, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. By 2023, Sunday circulation had plummeted to roughly 86,000. When it announced two months ago that it planned to stop printing on Feb. 2, the company noted that its circulation had dropped by an additional 21 percent last year.

There you are.

And, with all those papers going online, what happens with state requirements on legal notices? Erm, this!

The Legislature adopted a temporary fix that permits communities with a defunct newspaper to purchase legal ads through the paper’s online news site. Lawmakers are expected to try to craft a more permanent solution this month. Lobbyists for counties, school boards and the state’s nearly 600 cities and towns are pressing for permission to publish legal ads on their own websites — a step that would deprive news organizations of a longstanding source of revenue.

And, yeah, I expect legiscritters will allow local governmental entities to publish. First, given New Jersey's state government reputation. Second, given how one company has so dominated one state's print media at the larger newspaper level, the NJ Lege may just want to say fuck you to the Newhouses.

==

And part 2 of the header?

It's becoming clearer by the day that the Los Angeles Times "doctor daddy" owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, is determined to kiss Trump's ass. His daughter may be right that a Kamala Harris endorsement editorial was spiked in part over Gaza. But, no more than in part, and surely a smaller part than she'd like to claim.

The latest? Doctor Daddy had a column, not a house editorial, critical of Brainworm Bobby, heavily edited, including changing the headline. Worse yet? It was an outsider's submitted column.

David Folkenflik notes that Doctor Daddy has gone Musk-y on his Tweeting for Brainworm Bobby, too.

Since I posted this last week? Doctor Daddy is also doing at least a bit of flirtation with the COVID antivaxxer world.

Not a fan of the move to Indian pagination hubs

 I know that more and more smaller newspapers, as individuals, or smaller newspaper groups, have been moving to a pagination hub, or even just a couple of individual paginators serving four or five weeklies or semiweeklies. I "get" that, though I'm not a total fan of papers that are still triweekly or more in print outsourcing.

I'm not at all a fan of "community" newspapers outsourcing overseas.

I call ethical hypocrisy, in fact. This, to me, basically spits in the idea of community-mindedness in general.

But that's just one issue.

I know the hedge fund chains aren't passing on any of the actual or alleged savings to remaining employees. What about smaller companies?

Also, part of the "tout" of Indian pagination hubs is that, since they're halfway around the globe from the US (setting aside daylight time, India is 11 1/2 hours ahead of US Central Time) you can work this to your advantage. Well, only if you're further exploiting them. Let's say you send a Google Doc or whatever with pagination info at 8 a.m. It's already 7:30 p.m. over in Mumbai or wherever. Assuming there's not a whiz kid knocking out six pages an hour, and also assuming there's not three people working on your, say, 12 page triweekly at the same time, you're not getting it back until 10:30 p.m. their time. Then, you're doing markups and edits, and expecting their changes? They're not going to be done until midnight Indian time or later. And, they're not getting paid for that late work.

Related? The people who do this work probably don't have the best English-language skills within Indians. People at the top of that food chain aren't working in jobs like this over there.

And, if you ever have to talk on the phone with them? Good luck with that Indian-accented English. All of this is sand in the gears.

In turn, if you have to work around their time, or they have to work around your time, and your press time? Even if you're a triweekly, you're going to have semi-stale news in the print version. Absolutely so, relative to what things would have been like before, if you're still a small daily.

So, this is an argument for further cutting your print days a week. But, that gets back to the bottom line.

So, are you really saving that much money?

==

That said, a lot of this isn't that new; it's just accelerating. 

Nearly 20 years ago, an online-only "newspaper" was outsourcing local government meeting coverage to Indians watching streaming video from the city, county and school boards meetings, with local governments big enough to be streaming their meetings that long ago. The Miami Herald was doing this not much later.

==

And, beyond the general professional angle? Three of four jobs for which I have had first-round interviews in the last 7-8 months do, or were moving to, an Indian pagination hub.

Gannett stealing editorial over-thinness from CNHI, it seems

 In my neck of the woods, CNHI now has one editor/managing editor for three newspapers: Gainesville, having added it to Weatherford and Cleburne. Now, that said, pre-COVID, none of those were seven-day dailies.

On the other hand, Wichita Falls, Abilene and San Angelo all being run by one editor, as per a new edition of TPA's Messenger? That's worse. Back in the day, less than a decade ago, all three were seven-day dailies.

In today's world, one could barely make an argument to have Abilene and San Angelo under one ME. But not all three.

That then said? Should this take off, and readers not object to any quality declines, or local-news quantity declines? Wait for the hedge fund folks in charge of many newspaper chains push for yet more of this.

Getty, Shutterstock merging; And?

I saw this a week ago via LinkedIn News. Per one commenter there, it's pretty much a nothingburger unless other things change at the merged company.

Smartphone improvements and easier to use DSLRs (which have gotten cheaper with the rise of mirrorless) all put as much pressure on both Getty and Shutterstock as do AI.

The press release says that the merged company will be "cutting edge" on its own image search and use of AI. But? I've used one of the photo-generative AI programs twice. Even in a small town, I had enough internet to create Woody Allen in a cowboy hat in less than 5 minutes. Something else, not "real world" in that sense but more dynamic, took a little longer but not that much. And, when I had Substack do me an AI image for a post? Something "acceptable," which gets back to a commenter, took 2 minutes or so.

The only real hope for this merged company is a mixture of totally redefining itself and the hope for massive copyright lawsuits against AI scraping.

So, the "and," as usual with me in such situations, is ultimately rhetorical.

There is a sidebar to all of this.

It's arguable that many photos now copyrighted should be in the public domain, not because they're photos, or photos of a certain type, but that copyright law gives way too many years of protection with its various lengthenings over the last couple of decades, and that this doesn't benefit individuals nearly as much as rich corporations ... like Getty. "Who Owns This Sentence" is a GREAT book on the history of copyright.

Yeah, Getty will stick it to the people it pays for images that are new images. It's still part of the problem.

Wrong on the Associated Press, Matt Pearce

Pearce is generally a very good guy on journalism stuff. I've followed him on Shitter for years.

But this piece at his Substack, bemoaning Evil Craphouse (Gannett) shivving the AP is wrong.

First, let's do the obligatory perusing of Gannett's lie. Any money saved will not be used to improve Gannett journalism; it will instead pay off vulture capitalists and/or line CEO pockets.

OK, that said, the deal itself?

Had a, say, pre-vulture capitalism McClatchey made such a deal with Reuters, or maybe a Lee Enterprises, or some other middling to large newspaper chain with half a sense of real journalism and not in the clutches of vulture capitalism? I'd applaud it.

To expand on what I told Matt in comments?

First, the AP has been just as much behind the curve on all things internet as any individual newspaper chain.

Remember that it was Deano Singleton as chairman of the board of AP who proposed the "TV model" for internet newspapers even though pay cable channels and pay-per-view CCTV etc existed well before the early 1990s. Remember that the rest of AP's board signed off on that.

Since then? AP has hosted internet spam by Taboola for years, and followed that up last year by officially deciding to enter e-commerce with ... Taboola! This ignores the ethics issue of trying to report on shit you're selling. (It was doing other content-shady things besides its Taboola partnership 15 years ago.)

It also "misstated, then adjusted" how much of its revenue still comes from US print.

And, I mistrust how much money-laundering may be behind its community journalism support.

Feel free to report on any or all of that, Matt. Rather than Wall Street having long knives out for the AP, the AP has been hopping more and more in bed with Wall Street for years.

And, while we're at it, speaking of Deano from the past? Hell, Matt, let's take a look at the Associated Press' current board of directors. The odious Will Lewis is on it. (Update: David Folkenflik has dropped a massive thread on Shitter referencing a petition by WaPost staff, much of which directly references Lewis.) The dude who replaced Mary Junck (so hated and roasted by Bill McClellan at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) at Lee Enterprises is there. (In fact, Junck was a former AP board chair.) Maia Abouelenein, before starting her own company, Digital and Savvy, was a bigwig at Google. Michael Newhouse, scion of the family that was one of the first larger chains to gut print newspapers, and in places like Cleveland, use webistes to do union-busting, is on it. In addition to the newspapers, Advance has a 30 percent chunk of Reddit, a slice of cable giant Charter and more. And, in NOLA, it was a fuck-up. That's a bunch of capitalist verschnizzle on a company that you claim Wall Street hates.

As for papers leaving it? The AP was slow to react, in and after the Great Recession, to members' needs and not offering more tiers of membership services, like say, half a dozen.

As for bashing Reuters? Reuters started just like AP, as a membership news aggregation and collection service, but in the UK not the US. It's no more evil than AP getting in bed with Taboola, if even that evil. Maybe Agence France-Presse will do something similar.

As for the fact that AP is a cooperative? Could be good, could be bad. As for the fact it's a nonprofit? The NFL is a 501(c)6 nonprofit. Catholic hospitals denying all women's reproductive services are nonprofits. The NRA is a nonprofit. Means nothing.