What's Not In The DMN
What's my pet peeve? The Dallas Morning News not covering The Dallas Morning News.
Newspaper publisher James Moroney sent an email to employees this morning announcing that the previously announced company-wide reduction in force was to happen today and tomorrow. Where did I read about this? Not in The Dallas Morning News. Frontburner has the story. And News' employees have their own blog covering the actions.
The employee blog, titled DMNcuts, has the subtitle, "About newsroom staffing cuts at the Dallas Morning News. Because somebody needs to do it." Exactly. Somebody does need to do it. Why The Dallas Morning News doesn't do it themselves is my pet peeve. It explains why The Dallas Morning News is doomed. All the experts know that the survival of newspapers depends on their ability to leverage their lead in local news coverage. Yet, even here, in a case where the news originates inside The Dallas Morning News itself, the DMN is scooped by Frontburner and a blog made up of soon-to-be-ex DMN employees. I hope Moroney assigns one of those writers the job of writing the DMN's own obituary before he lets them all go, because he's going to need it for the DMN's last issue.
I sympathize with the employees who are losing their jobs. The newspaper business is going through wrenching changes. The people running the business are seemingly incapable of adapting fast enough to survive. The people writing the stories pay the price.
Sexually Oriented Business Still Restricted
A while back, we commented on the Richardson Coalition PAC's editorial criticizing the Richardson City Council for rejecting as a stated goal the evaluation of further restrictions on Sexually Oriented Business zoning. William "Bill" McCalpin posted his own response on The Richardson Echo, pointing out that, in 2007, the city council adopted zoning changes that restricted such businesses as much as is legally practical under current state and federal laws.
Today, the Richardson Coalition PAC responds, implying that the council isn't doing enough without spelling out what more is needed. The "Webmaster for the Richardson Coalition" (no further identification is offered) claims that the only action the PAC requested was "vigilance," implying that the council has not been vigilant on this issue. Further, the PAC's Webmaster claims the council is reluctant to "consider sensitive and controversial issues." Both of these implications are false. The council did not take its eye off the ball, as the PAC's Webmaster claims. The ball is still in hand and sexually oriented businesses are still restricted. The current zoning laws, adopted in 2007 as a result of this issue, are working. The Richardson Coalition PAC offered no evidence to the contrary before and its Webmaster offers none now. Despite the PAC's efforts to make this into a campaign issue during this city council election, there is no issue here. The council adroitly handled this sensitive issue in 2007 and continues to be sensitive to any changes in the status quo that may arise to make it an issue again.
The DMN Voter's Guide Is Out
The Dallas Morning News' voter's guide is out and offers the many candidates running for Richardson City Council to speak to voters directly. The questions are weighted towards regional issues -- rail, water, illegal immigration -- but there are open-ended questions that allow the candidates to speak to issues unique to Richardson. I'll offer my impressions tomorrow.
4 comments:
I ran through the Guide and read the candidate-provided responses. Some of them are more informal than one might expect ("kinda").
At least the URLs for candidate websites were given; I have not seen them collected elsewhere.
The answers I found most intersting were under:
"Some cities have taken an aggressive stance against illegal immigration. What changes in local laws, if any, should your city adopt to address this issue?"
and
"What issue divides your city the most, and what would you do to make your city less divided?"
and
"What is an uncomfortable truth about your city that your constituents need to confront?"
Some borderline interesting reading on those. Most of the rest of it was predictable political boilerplate.
Side rants, while the coffee is brewing:
It took me a while to find any information on the COR website that showed who lives in what city council districts. There is a district map here:
http://www.cor.net/default.aspx?id=5342
I am not generally stupid or web ignorant but it took me a while to find. There are references on the COR site to the city being broken up into quadrants for this purpose, but no indication of the boundaries that I could find.
While I'm at it: I sure wish cor.net would quit encapsulating everything in .pdf. It's unnecessary, wasteful of bandwidth, and annoying.
Sorry for the long spiel. Keep up the good work, Ed.
Love, Bloggermouse
your token libertarian
bloggermouse, that's a lot on your mind while you brewed coffee. ;-)
I linked to candidates' Web sites (all I could track down) when I first blogged on this election.
I liked the questions. If candidates wanted to unload on any of the wedge issues I worry about, they could have. None did. Illegal immigration and sexually-oriented businesses are non-issues in these responses. Wardrup does unload on Slagel, but that's about it. Anyway, more about my impressions tomorrow.
Bloggermouse, the official definition of each Council district can be found at http://www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?pid=10221&sid=43 .
Explode the "Part 1 Charter*" entry, then click on "Section 4.01. Number and description of districts."
You already found a PDF of the district map, but here is a jpg: http://www.cor.net/citycouncil.aspx?id=130 .
Note that one reason the City might not emphasize what district you as a voter live in, is because all voters in Richardson vote for all 7 places, so it matters only where the candidates for Places 1, 2, 3, and 4 live, not where any voter lives. Make sense?
Bill
Here are William J. 'Bill' McCalpin's links again:
Municipal Code
District Map
Thanks for the links. Ain't the Internet grand? Check out the candidates' Web sites, too, y'all.
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