Nearly a year ago, shortly after Hearst bought the Dallas Snooze, I went one better than Dick Tofel's mild C-suite interview with Hearst's top brass to wonder what would be next for it, at least here in Texas.
Now, with Chatham Asset Management forcing McLatchKey to cut again at many of its newspapers, including seven editorial cuts at the Fort Worth StartleGram, I think this deserves a revisit.
First, would Chatham be in sales mode? Possibly. Fort Worth is nowhere near other papers in its chain, most of those being McClatchy's old California core.
Hearst might not cut even more. Could you?
But, it could "backfill" some regional content from Dallas.
Also this would give it total control of all points of the Texas Triangle plus Austin. That's enough to consider setting up a (paid, not free) statewide news service to compete with the Texas Tribune. Keep it low cost, but sell it across East and Central Texas and you're set. And, following up on that old piece, if you could get Lee to sell Waco and Bryan-College Station, on sports, you own not only all the professional sports sites in Texas, but all the Division 1 college sites except Lubbock, and lesser D1 football teams like Stephenville/Tarleton and Nacogdoches/Stephen F. Austin. You could make your syndicated service good for sports as well as news.
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