What the buyouts say

Carolyn Barta has stirred up a hornets' nest on DallasBlog.com by reporting on rumors of who in the Dallas Morning News newsroom is and isn't taking Belo up on offers of a buyout. Belo is downsizing to cut costs. Cuts are aimed at areas that don't fit with the new strategy to focus on local stories. So far, Ms Barta's blog entry has attracted 77 responses from readers, almost uniformly critical of the DMN. The exception is one from an anonymous reader with the alias of "Very Unofficial DMN Retort", which stirred things up all the more.

Now who can do a better jobs a company with millions to commit or a snarky little online blog like Front Burner that does nothing more than comment on what others write and chase celebrities at swimming pools. Do you really want to trust something like DallasBlog for news? Let's say it like it is - DallasBlog is nothing but a sophomoric effort by a small group of has-beens living off credentials they earned at the Dallas Morning News years ago and funded by God knows who (along with a couple of political has-beens). The Dallas Observer has one reporter (admittedly a good one) and a Blog produced by basically one person. D and the Observer are about entertainment and Dallas Blog is about bitterness. The Dallas Morning News is not concerned about competition from either.

Except for the last sentence, I think the anonymous poster has hit the mark.

Frontburner is snarky. It comments instead of reports, except for the occasional celebrity sightings. And occasional commotion visible from their office windows, which they ask readers to investigate. As for D Magazine itself, it's in a different market altogether than what a daily newspaper must be.

Unfair Park is indistinguishable from Frontburner. And the Dallas Observer itself hasn't been the same since Laura Miller and The Straight Dope were staples.

Dallas Blog is made up mostly of has-beens and wannabes. The wannabes are in turn snotty and defensive. Take, for example, Trey Garrison's several posts in just this one thread:

I think Jerome Weeks won't be missed.
...
I'm not going to name names but I can only think of a few current editorial board members worth keeping.
...
By the way, for any DMN insiders out there, why does Macarena Hernandez still have a job?
...
For has-beens and - I suppose in my case a "never-was" - we sure trumped the DMN on a number of bigger city issues. We're nine months old and growing. What's your excuse, DMN?
...
Oops. Here's the right URL for DallasCEO.

That last "Oops" captures Dallas Blog in a nutshell. It may have great potential, but it's an amateurish publication. It has the feel of something slapped together by a politician (Tom Pauken) and a reporter (Scott Bennett) who haven't a clue about the technology behind Web publishing. It shows.

Which brings us to that anonymous poster's final comment. Despite all the flaws of DMN's online rivals, you'd better believe that DMN is watching and worried. The future is online. If DMN doesn't figure it out, someone else will.