DART's "not so good thing" - Update

An anonymous poster submitted a comment to an old article (read here) regarding Rep. Angie Chen Button's role as a DART board member in DART's $900 million cost overrun in 2008. DART is still reeling from that. I don't know about a Button-Jeffus connection the anonymous poster refers to nor the requirements for a conflict of interest charge, but if what he or she says is true, this particular situation doesn't pass the smell test.

"Ed, I ran across this article while doing some research on Rep. Button. I did some checking into this Garland Council meeting and found this shocker: The guy questioning Button about the $900M shortfall (Jeffus) shows up on Button's payroll to the tune of over $60K in 2008 alone [Texas Ethics Commission filings and streaming video obtained from Garland City Secretary's Office]. This raises a question: A Dart Board representative works for the council that appointed them right? So was there a conflict of interest going on in 2008 with a sitting council member being on the payroll of a sitting board member the council appoints? Is there a statute of limitation for conflict of interest violations?"

Briefing

Know what I'm talking about?

If you know that the headline, "Briefing," refers to The Dallas Morning News' freebie newspaper that is tossed on the lawns of 200,000 non-subscribers Wednesdays through Saturdays, then Belo's branding effort is working. According to Robert Wilonsky, in a Unfair Park blog, Belo CEO Robert Decherd maintains that "the free, miniature Morning News is a money-maker, not merely a trash-generator." And he apparently gets support from Editor & Publisher.

Maybe yes, maybe no. I was more interested in the opening this blog posting offers me to question a mystery that's been bugging me ever since the thin, soggy paper started showing up on my own lawn a year or two ago. So, I posted my question in a comment on Unfair Park.

"Is anyone else receiving two copies of Briefing in the same bag? Not all the ads, just the main section. It's not just an occasional accident. It's pretty dang near every day. What gives?"

So far, no luck. Either Unfair Park readers have moved on to other pressing topics (Jim Schutze is back at the City Hall trial; bring the popcorn), or no one else is getting double delivery (two for the price of none), or no one knows why the DMN is being so generous (word used loosely). I'm hoping readers here might be more knowledgeable than Unfair Park readers (I know we all think that, but here's the chance to prove it).

SNAFU with DMN Web Site

But don't turn to your local paper to read about it

In case you missed it, The Dallas Morning News Web site was seriously troubled for most of last Friday. Ian McCann, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, explained it as "the virtual hamsters who power the dallasnews servers were out of commission. Or something." Later, when service was restored, McCann explained, "we worker bees don't got a clue what happened, and I doubt they'll be telling us."

This is another example of my pet peeve with the news media. Why isn't a snafu that shuts down a major metropolitan daily's Web operations considered newsworthy? Until the DMN can learn to cover itself, there's a big hole in its coverage of anything local. If the future of the news is local, the DMN is doomed.

UT-Dallas Police Scandal

Brass Pig Award? What were you thinking?

The UT-Dallas police chief resigned without explanation in May, after having been placed on administrative leave in April. Hints of scandal hung over her head. Last week, clues to what was behind the actions began leaking out. According to Holly K. Hacker in a story in The Dallas Morning News

"The former police chief of the University of Texas at Dallas ran personal errands in her state-leased sport utility vehicle, several employees allege. They say she ordered employees to drive her family to the airport for vacations, and to do work for her consulting businesses. ... [O]fficers objected to the 'Brass Pig Award,' created by Ridge and given at an annual awards banquet to the officer 'with the most embarrassing mishap of the preceding year.'"

All in all, petty and tawdry. Good examples for that management training chapter titled "What Makes a Bad Boss."

Are there any larger lessons to learn here? That remains to be seen. How did the situation get out of control? Were these longstanding offenses that were widely known but overlooked? Was oversight of the police chief herself lax? Did the university discourage employees from reporting abuses? The sooner we can get past the juicy details about the chief's SUV and her brass pig and get on to the meatier details about who in the higher-up UT-Dallas administration let the campus police department get so far out of control, the sooner UT-Dallas can put this whole sorry chapter behind it.

Second DART Line Downtown

DART at a crossroads

Jim Schutze nails it again. Whether he's reporting on the Trinity Tollroad or the downtown convention center hotel or, in this case, DART, he offers an insight that you just don't get from The Dallas Morning News, the mayor, or, in the words of Schutze, "the tiny group of business people who make decisions about downtown Dallas."

In this case, he gets his insight from John C. Tatum Jr., a downtown developer from way back who has a vision of downtown as the region's biggest "transit-oriented development." But only if Dallas avoids bottlenecks and facilitates riders transferring between lines.

The most likely route for a second downtown DART line diverts away from the Pacific Avenue route of the existing line, taking it way to the south in order to go past the proposed convention center hotel. Like most people, I was inclined to favor that route. If we're going to build a hotel, it only makes sense to have light rail access. But Tatum explains persuasively why such a route, although friendly to the convention center hotel, is likely to be the worst possible route to foster transit-oriented development downtown.

Why? Because two separated lines guarantees a bottleneck where they cross, where congestion is sure to result, where the experience of transferring between lines is bound to be unpleasant. Instead, Tatum proposes running the second line down Elm Street (or, rather, under Elm Street), with multiple connections to the Pacific Avenue line like rungs on a ladder. This creates multiple intersections, all just an escalator ride away. It also expands the zone of maximum development potential along a spine the length of downtown, instead of at a single intersecting point.

The downside? It isolates the the convention center. And the mayor, the city council, the newspaper, the business people who make decisions about downtown, all have much invested in that hotel. DART is being used to help make the hotel successful, rather than using the hotel and DART together to make downtown successful.

This may not have been Jim Schutze's insight, but maybe it takes someone like him, with no personal financial interest in DART, the hotel, or real estate tracts on the far southwest side of downtown, to talk to someone like John Tatum and recognize his vision as being what's in the best interest of Dallas as a whole.

Redistricting Collin County

Do the commissioners know how to count?

Bill Baumbach, in The Collin County Observer, reports that the Collin County Commissioners Court is proposing using its own county GIS estimates to draw new commissioners district boundaries now rather than wait for results of the 2010 federal census.

The argument in favor of the proposal is that the county has experienced booming population growth since the last census in 2000 and the current districts are unrepresentative of the current distribution of population in the county. No doubt, that's true. The argument is that the current boundaries are so out of balance that waiting for the 2010 census data is intolerable. Perhaps, that's true.

The argument against is that allowing the commissioners to be in charge of both counting heads and drawing boundaries creates too much opportunity for abuse. No doubt, that's true. The argument is that living with the current boundaries until 2010 census data is available is tolerable. Perhaps, that's true.

Baumbach comes down on the side of using independent federal census data, even though it's outdated. He's willing to live with boundaries known to be inaccurate, resulting in one person's vote carrying more weight than another's, until after 2010, in order to eliminate a source of potential abuse.

I come down on the side of using the most accurate information available. Sometimes, that's census data. Sometimes, it isn't. In this case, nine-year-old census data is clearly out of date. County GIS estimates might very well be more accurate. Baumbach doesn't say so, but I infer he believes that when the 2010 census data becomes available, it will be more accurate than the county GIS estimates. He says,

"[Collin County GIS staff] have plotted every home in the county, and then they use what they believe is the current average number of people per home to estimate the current population. The GIS staff believes this system, with some adjustments, is superior to methods used by state and COG demographers. The US Census uses a different method. It actually counts the number of people living at each address. A few years ago, attempts by some members of congress to allow the use of statistical estimates on 'hard to count' populations were shot down. Legislation was passed into law requiring that only actually counted people, instead of estimated counts be used for redistricting."

Counting people is not as simple as it sounds. Counting the homeless, the transient, those hiding from authorities, creditors or maybe just their families, all can be devilishly difficult. So much so that it's very easy to distort the results of a census just by how much effort the administrators decide to put into rooting out every last head to count. It's almost certainly true that the decennial federal census is not as accurate a count of heads as cross-checks and statistical corrections could make it.

If Baumbach opposes what's happening in Collin County because he thinks the current federal census methodology is the best possible way to count people, he's mistaken. It might or might not be more accurate than the county GIS estimates, but it's not as accurate as modern statistical methods could deliver if the census takers weren't forbidden by law from using modern methods. But as long as Baumbach sticks with his argument that Collin County commissioners can't be trusted to count people accurately, whether by doing a head count or by relying on methods of estimation, Baumbach may be on firmer ground.

HOV Lanes

Why should cheaters have all the fun?

On The Dallas Morning News Transportation blog, Rodger Jones asks, "Should Dallas HOV drivers turn in cheaters?" Seattle runs a program where drivers report offenders who then are mailed educational materials about rules and regulations for use of the HOV lanes. Opinions about the effectiveness of the program are mixed, but it is popular with the driving public.

HOV lanes are a popular source of complaint. Some drivers can't find them (e.g., on US 75 north of LBJ). Some drivers find the frequently broken pylons a driving hazard. Some drivers just hate to see open lanes when they are stuck in traffic. Some drivers think that building more lanes open to all would do more to relieve congestion.

There's some validity to these complaints. But the bottom line is that America's love affair with the automobile running on imported oil can't go on forever. Some combination of car-pooling, public transportation, denser development and alternative fuel development is essential. Wishing HOV lanes would just go away is just that -- wishful thinking. Even if they did, our transportation problems wouldn't be solved. We've got HOV lanes now. Let's make the most of them.

So, should Dallas HOV drivers turn in cheaters? Sure. Not because it necessarily increases compliance, but because it will make the law-abiders feel better. The cheaters probably have been deriving some satisfaction from flouting a hated law. Now, if the law-abiders were to derive some satisfaction with sticking it to someone else, so be it. Why should the cheaters have all the fun?

Once we're all having fun, how about we get on with those other, better solutions: public transit and alternative fuel development?

LexisNexis and blogs

In The Dallas Morning News Trailblazers blog, Robert T. Garrett comments on a Vanity Fair piece by Todd S. Purdum that explains that former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin had a "horse whisperer" from Texas, Mark McKinnon, to serve as a calming presence during the stressful early days of her campaign. The article claims McKinnon's role was as yet unreported, a claim Garrett disputes, saying that the DMN's own Wayne Slater reported on McKinnon's presence in the campaign on the DMN Trailblazers blog.

It's not Sarah Palin or the intriguing notion that she needed a "horse whisperer" that's the subject of this blog item. What caught my eye was Garrett's explanation for why Purdum didn't credit Slater: "blogs such as this one aren't easily scoured by Nexis-type search engines ..."

I'm thinking that can't be true. Maybe LexisNexis chooses not to index the DMN blogs, but there isn't much of a technical barrier to doing so. A quick search with Google (which itself has no trouble indexing blogs) provides a suggestion of what might be going on. Mere Rhetoric reports that LexisNexis is contacting bloggers before syndicating their content. Back in 2007, a quick search indicated the number of blogs indexed and the selection of posts indexed both seemed somewhat random, but it was being done. I'm thinking LexisNexis must have gotten more thorough in the meantime.

Maybe the DMN ought to contact Lexis and let them know of the proliferating number of blogs the DMN is creating. Or maybe the DMN ought to concentrate on branding its blogs, so companies like Lexis (and readers like me) don't have so much trouble keeping track of them. Then, fine writers like Wayne Slater would get more credit when credit is due. Just a thought.

Dallas Blog Strays From Home

Now your BBC news clipping service

Several years ago, Tom Pauken, Scott Bennett and others with strong reputations in local politics and journalism started a blog they named Dallas Blog and described it as "the Blog of Dallas." From the first, they said the blog wouldn't be restricted to local issues, but readers could be forgiven for assuming that Dallas would be a primary subject of a blog titled Dallas Blog and featuring Texas writers.

I was an enthusiastic early reader, buying in to the blog's goal of being "be an independent voice for those 'forgotten Americans' who don't have lobbyists in Austin and Washington representing them, but who simply want a better community, better state, and better nation." I accepted Tom Pauken's invitation for readers "to respond to our stories and viewpoints by posting comments on our site", at least until I was blocked from commenting for unstated reasons.

I still subscribe to the RSS feed of Dallas Blog, but find it takes less and less time to dispose of the content. Here, for example, are the most recent headlines, all summaries of stories in other news sources lifted by the only remaining daily contributor, Tom McGregor.

• Japan's Lawmakers Pressure PM to Quit
• China's Economy Regains Rapid Growth
• Palestinian President Shuts Down Al-Jazeera
• India Issues Biometric Cards to 1.2 Billion Citizens
• Love Hotels Remain Popular in Japan
• Religious Controversy Ensnares Malaysia
• Ousted Zelaya Calls For Honduran Insurrection
• Al-Qaeda to Target China
• N Korea Insults S Korea President 10 Times-a-Day

Six of the stories are lifted from British news sources. If I want to read The Daily Telegraph, I'll subscribe to their RSS feed. Who knows, I might also read about Dallas there more often than I do at Dallas Blog.

Maybe Tom Pauken intends to revive Dallas Blog as a real alternative news source. Maybe Tom McGregor is just housesitting while Tom Pauken is away in Austin. Or maybe, like millions of other bloggers, Pauken started his blog and soon lost interest and abandoned it, in this case leaving only a parked domain with semi-automated postings by Tom McGregor. In any case, it just seems like such a waste. It could have been so much more.

DFW Business News Headlines

Still ugly out there

Getting back to the news after a two-week hiatus, this is what I find in my RSS feeds from Dallas Business Journal. It's enough to make me wonder if coming back was such a good idea.

• Texas Industries Inc. reports $42.4M Q4 loss
• AMR Corp. posts $390 million net loss
• Lone Star state's millionaire count drops
• Texas health premiums skyrocketed this decade
• Tuesday Morning: Q4 sales drop 4%
• Tandy Leather: Year-to-date sales drop 2%
• Texas sales tax revenue down 11 percent in June
• Office rents drop to 2006 levels
• Woodmont TCI Group files for bankruptcy
• D-FW commercial foreclosures up 12%
• Neiman's: Total sales fell 19.4% in June
• J.C. Penney Co.'s same-store sales drop 8%
• Analyst: Capacity cuts loom for airlines
• Southwest's traffic falls, tickets on sale
• Oceanaire files Ch. 11, Dallas eatery remains open
• GM Arlington plant to go in asset sale
• Sun Microsystems lays off 61 in Dallas
• American Airlines traffic drops 8.1%
• Millennium State Bank of Texas fails
• Weil Gotshal to close one Texas office
• Opus West Corp. plans bankruptcy filing
• Crabtree & Evelyn files Chapter 11

So, is all of the news bad? There were some headlines hinting at good news that paradoxically were the result of all of the bad news.

• DFW hotels cutting fees to lure business travelers
• D-FW traffic congestion declines
• Survey: Texans saving more, spending less

Finally, one good news headline suggests that as bad as things look to be in Texas, they are probably worse elsewhere: "Texas faring better in recession."

On the other hand, bad news usually brings good opportunities. So, who is laying the groundwork for reaping the benefits when the economy recovers?

May I Have a Word? Veloweb

DART and trails in Richardson

Ian McCann, in The Dallas Morning News, reports the good news that "Richardson plans new trails to link to DART stations."

A new trail will provide access to the Bush Turnpike DART station, up to now isolated from all commuters except those who can get there by car or bus.

A new trail will connect Renner Rd with the Galatyn Park DART station. There's already a trail that does that, the trail meandering through Richardson's gem, the Spring Creek Nature Preserve, but some people have complained that they don't want to walk through the woods, especially at night. Now, they'll be able to walk a new hike/bike trail alongside the new Routh Creek Parkway. Sure, the new road scars a beautiful nature preserve, but if it caters to cyclists and walkers, too, maybe it is an acceptable balance of competing careabouts.

And there's hope for a new trail along the Cotton Belt rail line, which will eventually be home to an east-west DART line across Richardson.

All of this trail activity in Richardson is just a small piece of a much bigger network of interconnected trails across North Texas. The bigger network even has a catchy name, a veloweb. What's a veloweb? Dictionary.com has never heard of the word. Google can't define it. But the North Central Texas Council of Governments is promoting the term to describe the "644 mile, designated off-street trail network that has been planned to provide bicycle and pedestrian connections in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex."

Some people flinch when they hear the word metroplex. Veloweb sounds like the kind of word with the potential to irritate people, too. Here's hoping the word veloweb becomes as common as metroplex, for it will mean that the vision of that 644 mile network of hiking/biking trails will have become a reality.

Police Chase

If it bleeds, it leads

There's a reason I don't watch local television news. It's the same reason I don't own a police scanner. I'm just not into murders, rapes, drug deals, kidnappings, traffic accidents, drownings, and "body bag" journalism in general. Then, there are the public interest stories that promise to keep me alive and healthy if I stay away from peanut butter, hotel bedding, tap water and breathing.

I know I'm in the minority on this, as every local television station found out years ago. Now, I fear that my new favorite local news source, The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, might be tempted to follow Channels 4, 5 and 8 in a race to the mucky bottom.

Ian McCann posted a blog item about today's car chase from Mesquite to downtown Dallas to north Dallas, ending in crash at the Richardson/Garland border. By 5:40 PM, the post had attracted 77 comments, by far the largest haul of commentary in memory on this fairly new blog. I fear McCann and Jeffrey Weiss, the main bloggers, will notice (or someone higher up will notice) and decide that blood and violence play as well in the blogosphere as they do in the vast televised wasteland. Given every newspaper's increasingly desperate search for relevancy, who could blame them for finding it in "a nasty looking T-bone crash" in Richardson? Just tell me you guys aren't going out to buy police scanners, will you?

Red Light Cameras Work

Latest evidence is from the city of Dallas

Kimberly Thorpe, in Unfair Park, reports on a meeting of Dallas' Automated Red Light Enforcement Commission, at which members were told that since the installation of 66 cameras in 2007, there has been a 62% reduction in red-light related accidents at intersections with cameras. The program cost is $6 million per year and ticket revenues last year were $7.4 million. After sending half of the net revenue to Austin, as required by the Texas legislature, the city's net revenue was $676,753, or about 10% of the cost of the program.

In short, red light cameras work! Our intersections are safer. The red light cameras are not "a bald faced cash grab," as one reader still believes even in the face of contradictory evidence. Or at least the cash grab isn't by cities; Austin's demand for half of the revenues is another matter. In fact, if the incidence of red light running continues to drop as drivers adjust their driving habits (which would be a good thing, remember), revenues will drop as well and the program might no longer pay for itself. In ticket revenues, anyway. In accidents avoided and lives saved, the program's positive return will be longer lasting.

Grading Newspaper Websites

The DMN flunks the test

The Web site 24/7 Wall St. recently published reviews of the top 25 Newspaper Websites, including The Dallas Morning News, which gets a grade of D-. Here's a sample of the report card:

"Dallasnews.com looks like it was put together by The Mad Hatter. Poorly designed traffic and weather sections often sit at the top of the homepage. There are some headlines that have no explanations. Others are explained too much so that reading the story would be redundant. The visitor cannot expect any consistency as he moves around the site. The first few stories are followed by blogs and a photo section where the content seems to have been picked at random. The rest of the homepage has other major sections with their primary stories highlighted. Local news does not get much exposure."

Ouch. Trust me, this isn't taken out of context. There are a few kind words about the DMN blogs and the DMN share of premium advertising, but a comment about how the DMN mixes editorial content with advertising also sums up the review as a whole: "Joseph Pulitzer is spinning in his mausoleum."

24/7 Wall St. begins its reviews by noting that newspapers need to increase revenue from their Websites faster than they lose revenue from declining circulations of their print editions. The DMN can't do that if it continues to delegate its Website design to the Mad Hatter. If the executives with careers steeped in print can't see that, maybe it's time to turn the company over to executive talent with some online experience.

FWISD Video Streaming of Board Meetings

Others can do it, why not Richardson?

Fort Worth Star-Telegram congratulates the Fort Worth school board on plans to stream its monthly meetings on its Web site, for live or delayed viewing. Hooray! It's about time. As the fictitious taxpayers in the Star-Telegram editorial say:

Taxpayer 1: Starting Tuesday night, we'll be able to watch streaming video of school board meetings online. You can watch live or later.

Taxpayer 2: Oh, joy. I can't wait. Scintillating on cable and computer.

Taxpayer 1: No, seriously, this is an exciting move into the 21st century.

Taxpayer 2: And it's only 2009.

When will Richardson join FWISD in the 21st century? The Richardson ISD does not provide streaming video over the Internet for its board meetings and, as far as I know, has no plans to do so. The Richardson City Council does not provide streaming video over the Internet of its city council meetings, and, as far as I know, has no plans to do so. Only promises that grow ever older. Video streaming of council meetings was a hot topic during the recent council election campaign, with all candidates telling voters they support it. Yet now, 45 days after the election, tonight's council meeting won't be available online, either live or in archive format. What gives, Richardson?

New DMN Blogs

How soon the DMN "blog" blog?

Keven Ann Willey, in an "Ask the Editor" piece in The Dallas Morning News, plugs the addition of five new blogs to the fifty or so that the DMN already runs. She says "savvy" readers already know about them. She says the DMN is "excited" about the opportunities the new blogs present. She says they are part of an "explosion" of new blogs newspaper-wide.

Pardon me if I'm less excited than she is. The Opinion blog, where all the topics used to be discussed, now seems to be more and more just an announcement vehicle for discussion that's moved to the other blogs. There's less and less reason for readers to come back there. And I sincerely doubt that the "Death Penalty" blog is going to attract enough readers to sustain itself. How long will it be before the DMN launches a "blog" blog, where we can discuss the "explosion of new blogs" on the DMN alone?

Streetcars

Cold case: Who killed streetcars?

The Dallas Morning News reports that the city of Dallas is seeking $80 million in federal funds to develop a downtown streetcar system. Anyone old enough to remember streetcars has fond memories. But one DMN reader, "1bellplaza," no fan of streetcars but perhaps too young to remember them, says in a comment, "Someone should ask why they did away with streetcars."

Seque to Trey Garrison, who inadvertently suggests an answer while lobbying for something else entirely. In a blog defending drinking and driving (that's not a typo; libertarian Garrison has some strange causes), Garrison notes:

"My favorite attorney, Robert Guest, talks about how bad zoning contributes to DWI. ... Robert equates bad zoning -- separating residential and retail use so that you can’t have a neighborhood bar or neighborhood market in an actual neighborhood -- with the word 'sprawl.'"

Related zoning laws required new businesses to set aside a minimum amount of parking space for cars, leading to businesses set back from streets and acres of parking lots in front of new retail. Streetcars, tethered to their tracks, were isolated and doomed. More mobile cars, now favored by zoning laws, thrived and drove the streetcars to extinction.

Would streetcars have survived without the favoritism of zoning laws? Maybe not. But it wasn't just zoning laws that streetcars had to contend with. The growing automobile industry left nothing to chance. In an essay titled "The StreetCar Conspiracy," former U.S. Senate Counsel Bradford Snell indicts General Motors:

"The streetcar did not die ... because of demographics or economics or disinvestments or evolution; it died because GM in 1922 made a conscious decision to kill it and, for the next several decades, pursued a strategy designed to accomplish this objective."

That strategy allegedly involved using freight leverage to force railroads to divest themselves of electric railways, pressuring banks to withhold funding for electric railways, purchasing and scrapping electric railways directly, and bribing mayors and city councils with Cadillacs and GM dealerships to convert streetcars to buses.

As with so many historicals trends that might have happened no matter what, this one was helped along by those who stood to benefit from the outcome at the expense of society as a whole. With unintended irony, that same DMN reader who advises others to ask why they did away with streetcars to begin with, thinks he knows why some government officials are now trying to bring back streetcars:

"Let me tell you why I think we need streetcars....... someone in city government will make millions off the deal."

If there's any truth to that, it would be a case of déjà vu.

DART's Lake Highlands Station

Trains OK. Cars OK. Just no walking.

Michael Lindenberger, in The Dallas Morning News's new Transportation blog (has anyone else lost track of how many blogs the DMN has now?) reports that some neighbors don't like the idea of providing access to a new DART Lake Highlands station on the Blue Line, set to open in 2010, from White Rock Trail. "They worry that if residents can walk so easily from their neighborhoods to the station, criminals from elsewhere can do the same thing in reverse just as easily."

Let me get this straight. Some people in Lake Highlands like the idea of light rail but want to make it so that only people who own cars can use it. Walking to and from the rail station will be discouraged. I suggest DART drop the idea of a Lake Highlands station altogether and use the money saved to put a station in a community that wants it. Win-win.

Richardson will take an extra DART station for the Red Line at Belt Line Rd (Main St). It'll be a shot in the arm for redevelopment of Richardson's old downtown.

DART to DFW Airport

Jim Schutze, Derailed

Unfair Park's Jim Schutze, who is generally on target and on time on almost anything to do with big Dallas projects like the Great Trinity Forest or the Trinity Parkway or the Trinity levees, goes horribly off-track today in a story about DART's long-term planning.

Schutze tells us that, in an effort to secure suburban support for recent legislation in Austin, DART was toying with the idea of changing its long-stated plan to extend the Irving Orange line to DFW airport and instead have the line take a right turn to Southlake. It's a crazy idea, even as an insincere talking point to get a few extra votes in Austin. If Schutze had just pointed out that it's a crazy idea and left it at that, he'd get no argument from me. But Schutze used it as a wedge to split the city of Dallas and the suburbs. Any thought of working together, of finding win-win solutions for the region as a whole, and Jim Schutze says, "what is my answer, assuming I have at least a low-functioning I.Q.? Skeeereeeew regionalism!"

It's the kind of comment I expect to read in the comments section. It's more than disappointing to read it coming from Jim Schutze himself. It just about kills my hopes that DFW might be serious about an alternative to building more highways. It's so easy for DART planning to collapse into regionalism, in the negative sense of the word. I had hoped that Jim Schutze would guide us past that trap, but instead, he falls into it himself.

Paying to blog

The Nightly Build

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Huffington Post Auctions Internship

Colleen McCain Nelson, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, asks the question that earns today's award for unintended irony. She reports that The Huffington Post is auctioning off an internship, with bidding already at $13,000. Asks McCain Nelson, "Suddenly, journalism has become a pay-to-play venture? Whoever has the most money gets to report their version of the news?"

Suddenly? Is McCain Nelson not aware that the newspaper business has always been about money? The deeper the pockets of the publisher, the bigger his voice in the community? What's the old warning to anyone who doesn't like what's being said about him in the press? Don't pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel? From William Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdoch, hasn't journalism always been a case of whoever has the most money gets to report their version of the news?

But McCain Nelson is probably thinking about the poor ink-stained wretches who work in the newsroom (i.e., herself). She needs the paycheck. She can't afford to keep working for a newspaper if she not only won't get a paycheck anymore but has to pay for the privilege of working there. Not to worry. The Huffington Post gimmick is not likely to be the wave of the future. Blogging might be, but paying to blog? No way. Look at it this way. For years, rich golfers and baseball fans have paid top money to play in pro-am tournaments and attend spring training camps with major leaguers. Journalists now have equal star power, where rich amateurs are willing to pay to rub elbows with the pros!