![[Ed says Nay]](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4958/1794/320/dont_trust.jpg "Ed says Nay")
Unfair Park | Jim Schutze:Jim Schutze's tongue-in-cheek satire of the new Bold Types blog of the Dallas Morning News metro columnists is, first, off the mark. The DMN's Sherry Jacobson simply commented that the ability to speak Spanish would help her as a reporter. She didn't say that she knew no other way to collect news.
But criticizing unfair potshots posted in a blog titled "Unfair Park" is an example of missing the point, isn't it? Mr Schutze's point being, apparently, that he is not a fan of the reporters and columnists at the Dallas Morning News.
The bloggers at Unfair Park are not alone in their disdain for the DMN. The response was much the same at FrontBurner, the blog for D magazine. Over at Dallas Blog, Scott Bennett (ex-DMN) piled on with the criticism. His repackaging of some FrontBurner criticism quickly racked up over 50 reader comments, all along the same line: oh no, how awful, how embarrassing for those DMN columnists.
Reading through all those put-downs, you'd be hard-pressed to find any specific criticism to explain the near universal negative judgment. The bloggers at Dallas Blog, FrontBurner and Unfair Park are all smart people, mostly professional reporters and writers. Still, it all comes across as a case of sour grapes. The Dallas Morning News has the circulation and revenues that the other outlets can only dream of having. The other blogs give the impression of featuring either disgruntled ex-employees of DMN or wannabe reporters for DMN.
Look, I'm no fan of the Dallas Morning News. But I'd like someone in the other camps to do a serious critique of that paper's shortcomings and its new blogs. Instead of just talking about it as if it's self-evident. Someone tell us why, exactly, your blogs are so much better than the DMN's content. Please.
1 comment:
Besides being unspecific, the criticism of the blogs at DMN is sometimes hypocritical as well.
Jim Schutze pokes fun at Sherry Jacobson for admitting to a regret that she doesn't speak Spanish. A few weeks ago, the Dallas Blog linked to a story reporting that Spanish-language radio incited the recent pro-immigration rallies. There was irony in the English-language Dallas Blog telling readers, after the rallies, what Spanish-language radio was saying before the rallies. (The Dallas Blog slogan: "We've got the news, after some kind bilingual soul translates it for us.") The irony was lost on the other blogs. But now the DMN's Sherry Jacobson is unfair game.
Another blogger criticizes the DMN's James Ragland for recycling a personal experience from Washington, DC, a decade ago. On the other hand, a few weeks ago, Scott Bennett posted a column on the Dallas Blog telling us that the media has a liberal bias (as if that's a scoop). For evidence, he used anecdotes of a fifteen year old press trip to Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. The other Dallas Blogs were fine with that, apparently.
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