A similar merger has already been completed in Chicago between Chicago Public Media and the Chicago Sun-Times. The DRC/KERA merger, which I have written about before, was completed last summ… Read More

 It probably also doesn't like the external media scrutiny from another media powerhouse, in this case, the Wall Street Journal training guns on the Old Gray Lady, but, given how often… Read More

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 co… Read More

 Ditto for other papers writing about this contretemps.Ditto for the StartleGram trying to pull the same trick with other small town newspapers."Don't become part of the story" is a bas… Read More

Access journalism is Beltway access, whether to the President, an executive branch Cabinet agency, or in the case of Joan Biskupic, to the Supreme Court. I suppose that with a Mitch McConnel… Read More

Apparently the Texas Observer's attempted recovery from its near death experience one year ago, mainly due to financial mismanagement, but with bits of other mismanagement and other general… Read More

 I remember, a year or so ago, when I first saw the AP's "donate" button at the upper-right corner of its website. The Associated Press has shat in its own foxhole for years (I just lov… Read More

I just got done reading a book that sounded interesting, and even was good at the start, but, had a surface-level treatment of background history behind our current level of First Amendment… Read More

This:The award for Foreign Reporting goes to the staff of The New York Times for unsurpassed coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas— George Polk Awards (@PolkAwards) February 19… Read More

That would be, per this piece, pairing with Bellingcat.For the unawares, Bellingcat is, contra how the Observer describes it, a Cold War 2.0 and Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ facilitator. See this… Read More

 That's of course, in my media world of alt-naming, the Austin American-Statesman.The Monthly notes how many other outlets are rushing in to fill the vacuum being left by the ongoing gu… Read More

 I was down this road a little over a year ago with Maricopa, Arizona, and it not wanting to pay the ME anywhere decent, as I nosed around. (Set aside that the co-owner sent me a Walgre… Read More

 I've written before about some of the foibles at the magazine, most in the name of New Agey-type pseudoscience. Well, time for a new round of that and more, from that magazine's last t… Read More

Good piece here from two academics. The TL/DR is that more local features stories and things like that has to be part of the issue.And, yeah, corporate media can sort of do remote stories ab… Read More

 I recently was interviewed by a recruiter. (Whom I may name here at some point later.)Asked about why did I leave job X after 2.5 years, job Y after 1.5, job Z after 2, etc.First, as I… Read More

 The Daily Snooze (not to be confused with the Dallas Morning Snooze) still claims to be a five-day daily, but, what would you get with that?Archived as well as current e-editions are a… Read More

 As Louis DeJoy kills the joy in newspaper Mudville with the ever-continuing rate hikes (mixed with the ever-continuing kowtowing to Amazon), newspapers that deliver by mail (which incl… Read More

Or, at least, at my local CNHI installment.Wonder why?Were people bitching about the amount of Texas Trib content? Bitching about seeing three days worth of comics at one time because it has… Read More

 They're looking for $317K by the end of the year.To that end, they've finally gotten smart enough to add two donor levels to their original Javascript screen of "supporter" at a paltry… Read More

 One again, it's time to criticize (not just critique, but criticize) the TPA, specifically, its Texas Press Service.I presume no newspaper editor in the state is dumb enough to run the… Read More

 When he was at the Washington Post, Froomkin actually had something to say, so I added his Presswatchers to my blogroll.It's leaving.Froomkin has become nothing but a #BlueAnon shill… Read More

 It's interesting how articles from one CNHI paper appear on another's website even if they have no real relevance there.For instance, Gainesville ISD, in Gainesville, Texas, looking fo… Read More

It's no secret that "The Great Hollowing Out" is happening, or rather, accelerating, in the High Plains of all Plains states. This includes Texas, and it includes the escarpment areas to the… Read More

 I've written here before about Wick Communications, both some general problems with it being ultra-cheap assed with its daily papers and a laughable idea of an in-house social media sy… Read More

 I knew Bruce when I was in Sulphur Springs, at the News-Telegram. He had moved from being the editor there at one time to "Country World," a weekly ag magazine. After he was let go, I… Read More

Great piece, to just that critical end, by Pro Publica.This:As they vanish, local newspapers are taking on a halo of everything that used to be good about America. They’ve come to symb… Read More

 I am assuming that the UnHerd Ventures mentioned in this piece by the Guardian as part of a team looking to acquire Britain's The Telegraph, owner of what the Guardian elsewhere calls… Read More

Per a recent presser, the National Newspaper Association supports the Journalism Protection and Competition Act, S 1094, to make large social media companies? and news aggregators? pay for… Read More

 Nieman Lab reprints a piece from The Conversation decrying Russian attacks on journalists.It ignores that Ukrainian journos could themselves be killed in Ukraine pre-invasion and that… Read More

 There, Sophie Culpepper says "ask your readership for story ideas."Uhh, no.First, even without some political specifics, out here in South Wingnutistan, that's asking you to report on… Read More

 The Snooze would be my "beloved" Dallas Morning News, last print product of A.H. (does not stand for Adolf Hitler) Belo, now called DallasNews Corporation and its last print product si… Read More

And, boy, community newspaper owners, publishers and general managers need to hear that.In fact, to state it again?Community newspaper owners, publishers and general managers need to hear th… Read More

 Yep, starting tomorrow, by state law, you're supposed to post your legals with the TPA webpage run by that grifting Column.If I owned a paper that were a TPA member, since the new stat… Read More

 First, this legislation, overviewed by Nieman Lab, appears to be somewhat better than the old Local Journalism Sustainability Act, harshly critiqued by me here, but that's a low bar.It… Read More

 Why would a pair of weekly papers with known ownership, a website, and contact email addresses, namely Cuero and Yorktown, advertise for what is essentially a general manager position… Read More

Dennis Phillips, after the passing of his wife Theresa, reportedly wants to sell it. Understandable in some ways. Interesting only it; info I had mentioned neither Marlin nor Cameron, which… Read More

Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the Marion County Record, speaks in more detail about last week’s police raid on his newspaper, which included seizure of ALL newspaper computers and… Read More

 Will a newspaper that I own to an NPR radio station.Was looking at a recent issue of the Denton paper.Kicking out all the frequency runs that say "Vote for Me" for the upcoming Best Of… Read More

 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… Read More

 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 distinguish… Read More

 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 business… Read More

 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 Aust… Read More

 Not in print, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is notJune 23, I saw an issue at one of the Denton library branches. It said: "Friday-Saturday, June 23-24." In other words, the StartleGram… Read More

 For those in the biz in Tex-ass, they know it's not THAT Sam Houston, but the guy who is owner and publisher of the Hood County News (Granbury) and formerly of both The Springtown Epig… Read More

Or, as I call it, the E-pooch Times, as in Screw the E-Pooch.What led to this?When taking back newspaper issue remainders to a recycling bin, I saw some other paper on top of material alread… Read More

 Gannett New Craphouse (actually it was OLD Craphouse) journos at the Austin Stateless are on strike.  Good luck; in all likelihood you won't get a real win, and certainly not one… Read More

 Is it CNHI (which currently stands for nothing, or Can't Nothing Help It, or Completely Nugatory Hollowed-out Investment, per its RSA ownership) charging $1.75 for a 14-page weekend ed… Read More

Er, Gainesville. Six pages broadsheet, 1 3/4 pages of ads, or a bit under 30 percent. Out in the country, on a slightly down year for us, we were still at about 35 percent on 10 pages, and w… Read More

 I didn't notice that on the Better Newspaper Contest entry form but TPA's Winner's Circle has it listed.Hope it isn't counted toward the Sweepstakes. TPA dropping Special Sections from… Read More

 If only Postmaster General Louis DeJoy actually improved service with the higher rates. If only Congress listened to somebody besides him. If only Biden would replace him — remem… Read More

 I was grokking a couple of issues recently at the Denton library.Monday, May 8? A 22-page paper. Not bad on editorial content for a Monday paper in today's world, I guess.Ads?GODAWFUL… Read More

Lemme see, keynote speakers include, in a publishers' Q&A roundtable:Lisa Chappell, a CNHI publisher. Really? Representative of a chain as bad as hedge-fund ones, but not even having tha… Read More

I understand that, as an official state magazine, they're trying to drive tourism to the state. I still don't have to accept pseudoscience used to promote The State Different (riffing on Fan… Read More

 The "this is no way to run a railroad" comes from an old-school executive editor at a newspaper group I was at many moons ago. Unfortunately, he never told that to his boss, the owner… Read More

 By that, I mean a "support" company designed either to help start-ups, especially "HUB" start-ups, or else one to keep non-chain small newspapers already in existence from imploding.We… Read More

 I think most of us knew that already, but at Nieman Lab, Joshua Benton whlps out the numbers on circulation decline for 2018-22. First, yes, COVID has accelerated problems at strugglin… Read More

Or so it seemed, as the Texas Democracy Foundation, which runs the Observer, had announced it was going to pull the plug. However, as for now, it's survived the executioner's ax. See below f… Read More

 An insider writes about the process for the Texas Observer. Interestingly, at other McLatchKey papers, columnists are certified/certifiable as union members. At the StartleGram, not so… Read More

 I understand if you're a semiweekly and your pub days have to be Tuesday and Friday because that's when the press can fit you in, and bigger semiweeklies, or a daily or two, whether fr… Read More

 She's back at the Dallas Observer as of late January, that is.No explanation on either her Muck Rack or her Twitter of her 4 1/2 month absence, blogged about here when she left last fa… Read More

 Cherry Road, about whom I've blogged before for its toxic wasteland job on the Sherman Dumpacrap, even twice, and before that, about it in general, is fixing to do the same to the Brow… Read More

 Yes, THAT Jeff Gerth of long-ago Whitewater infamy wrote a multi-part series reviewing mainstream media coverage of Russiagate.Beyond his background making this a bad optics issue, his… Read More

 TPA last week sent out by email another guest column. I assume Mike Hodges et al are paid for these redistributions. That said, Mike et al, you don't have to take the money, just like… Read More

Reforming Section 230 of the 1998 Communications Decency Act has given companies on the Internet and content providers both a variety of very solid protections against content lawsuits.But… Read More

 And, no that's not good.I blogged early last fall about the announcement that, no paper, NPR radio station KERA had an agreement to take over the Denton paper. (Since then, KERA has al… Read More

 Here's the top 10 posts from the last year, by readership, as not all were from last year.1. An insider in Decatur. I don't know why this took off so much, but it did, even though it's… Read More

Per the Reporter, Santa Fe's alt-weekly, it has ZERO in-person reporters at its Ruidoso and Alamogordo, New Mexico papers. Alamogordo was a print daily pre-COVID. And, it, at least (dunno ab… Read More

 Until I saw the Chronicle's obituary story for its former deputy opinion editor, I never put the two and two together that it was the former Snooze editorial writer and columnist.&nbsp&hell…Read More

I didn't realize that Yates, scion of THE Yates oil and gas plutocrats, had bought Española's Rio Grande Sun earlier this year. (Of course, it had been a semi-laughingstock itself lon… Read More

Its Dec. 1-7 issue (just 24 pages at about a 50 percent adhole, not counting house) had a quarter-page ad from Robert Jeffress. Yes, THAT Robert Jeffress, wingnut Trump-schlonging pastor at… Read More

 I had heard the Wise County Messenger would be looking for a new ME as Richard Greene was moving on. Apparently they already have one, as on editorial flag box thumbnail photos, Austin… Read More

On Tuesday, the Gainesville (Tex-ass) Register ran an op-ed column by Jim Zachary, editor of The Valdosta Daily Times and also CNHI's director of newsroom training.End of the first column of… Read More

 That's the case with Evan Smith's CEO replacement, Sonal Shah, per the Gray Lady's profile. She worked in Dear Leader's White House and later on Mayo Pete Buttigieg's prez campaign. Sh… Read More

 And, if so, was it over her coverage of the PRO Gainesville protests?Or, did she just quit?In either case, I found it weird that, even before that, she was doing reporting on exurban a… Read More

In a recent post at Second Rough Draft, he doesn't say "abandon them entirely," but does say that most papers that aren't "national," ie, WaPost, NYT, WSJ, and maybe the LAT, should pretty m… Read More

 We all now about wingnut "Pink slime" fake news sites. Some are blatant, with almost no actual local news, and only regional, state and national news release type stuff from PACs, etc… Read More

 TPA has a subdivision called Texas Press Service, through which companies can run press releases to TPA member newspapers.Yesterday, a company headquartered in Mississippi announced fi… Read More

Or, the Denton Wrecked-Chronic, per my inimitable style of naming newspapers.WHY is KERA buying it?It's a shell of itself, and as I said on Twitter, it was a shell of itself pre-COVID.I live… Read More

A stalwart within Texas community papers shut its doors in July, saying that it not only wasn't making enough money, but saying it wasn't making money period.The Leader had been in the hands… Read More

People in the newspaper biz will of course understand who Craphouse is, like they'd understand the reference to Alden's newspaper empire, Dead Fucking Media.Anyway, the WaPost had a story th… Read More

My earlier suspicions about CherryRoad "Media" being a stalking horse for its data vacuuming parent have been confirmed by others. One person has said that they're buying up newspapers to ta… Read More

For the first time, I think, I was recruited for a job, and no, not by one of those recruiters.   It was by the former top editor, now transitioning out to a job at Politico, at a comb… Read More

I first blogged about the new entrant into the Texas newspapers biz in March. Among their titles, in my area, is a (I think?) still-daily in print Sherman Herald-Democrat. Took a gander at r… Read More

 For my original, and skeptical, take on the small-town Minnesota newspaper owner who wants to go fight in Ukraine so badly that he wanted somebody to take his newspaper off his hands… Read More

Worried that the next time the Texas Lege considers a bill to remove the requirement that legal notices (both ones by governments and ones that government requires of private entities, like… Read More

 It's not really Gannett, of course, except for branding purposes, and for MY anti-branding purposes, Gatehouse is Craphouse.So, what HAS Craphouse done now that draws ire?Decided to sl… Read More

By now, many inside the biz have heard about Lee Zion wanting to gift a small Minnesota weekly paper to "go see the elephant," per an old Civil War phrase, in Ukraine.First, he's all wet on… Read More

 First, it raised its print prices again, to $1.25 Tuesday and $1.75 Friday. Seriously, is anybody paying that? And, did your subscription prices go up with that?Second, its editor is t… Read More

On LinkedIn, I saw an ad for a newspaper editorial position. ME at a 6-day daily.It, the Daily Standard, claims to cover three counties in northwest Ohio.Problem?Aside from its home county… Read More

 And, I say that from experience with both in the last six months.About six months ago, I applied to be managing editor of a fair sized Gannett weekly in NorCal: three staff writers. Pa… Read More

 Last week, was looking at LinkedIn, and saw the ME's position for Mexico come up.I applied when it was open in August, 2020. Job went to somebody else.I applied again when it opened 14… Read More

 I was wondering who Cherry Road was, seeing them advertising for several openings on the Texas Press Association website.And, this is them, by national newspaper presence.OK, here in T… Read More

This is Sunshine Month in the media world. And, in the past, at various newspapers of mine, I've had no problems running outside guest columns. Often, the Texas Press Association serves some… Read More

Innnteresting, and per the Trib, apparently was done with ZERO forewarning to journo students, or input by them.President M. Katherine Banks (always distrust people who go by first initial… Read More

 I had teed up another post about the Texas paper, but eventually deleted it, as I decided it was too nitpicky.Not this time.I don't know everything about the newspaper world, but I do… Read More

 After 13 years, Evan Smith has decided to leave the online newspaper/website he started Ross Ramsey, and John Thornton's money in the background.The NYT piece gives Smith the respectfu… Read More

 A week ago, in the pages of the Snooze, I saw a "tip your carrier" coupon. I was just grokking to see if the exurban issue, still weirdly delivered to the Fort Worth side of the north… Read More

 Even for me, there's new things to learn.I had run into "Mugger" Russ Smith on Twitter via Ken Silverstein ... did not know until reading this new Atlantic profile that he's the brothe… Read More

That's my take on what appears to be the definite hiatus and possible death of the Akron Devil Strip, as reported by Laura Hazard Owen at Niemen Lab.It billed itself as Akron's first "commun… Read More

An Atlantic staff writer, Elaine Godfrey, checks in from the scene of the crime, Burlington, Iowa, where she grew up.The Burlington paper is still a daily since the new Gannett, aka the old… Read More