The one that went under.
Naturally.
Now, this was over twenty years ago. We adapted. We have read The Dallas Morning News every single morning for that entire time.
However, in the last year or so there have been more troubling changes than the usual ones that we see complained about by everyone in general when griping about media.
- Saturday's religion section was abruptly replaced with a story on the front of the Metro section that led to a couple of token listings near the back pages. I woke up every Saturday looking forward to that religion section. That was like a punch in the gut. (Result: Less local coverage.)
- The television reporter was fired. Y'all know how very important my tv is to me! I needed that reporter! He was reliable and a good judge of shows! Luckily, he moved to the internet and I can get my dose of Ed Bark anyway. (Result: Less local coverage.)
- Local movie reporters were cut. We were left with maybe one for the main movie each week. The rest is picked up from syndications around the country. If I wanted to know what someone in LA thought of a movie, I'd read their paper. (Result: Less local coverage.)
- Tom began pointing out to me business stories where very precise terminology was misused. To the point where two words meaning different things were used interchangeably in the same stories. I don't know if the editors and reporters are overworked or simply incompetent. Those aren't stories we can trust. (Result: Untrustworthy local coverage.)
- We started seeing articles from people we knew. These were largely neighborhood event coverage and often the reporters were local mothers we knew through our children's schools. There's nothing wrong with that as long as they can write well. But when the newspaper has fired a lot of the trained reporters and now seems to be filling in with local freelancers ... who can't necessary write the way a reporter would? (Result: Local coverage we don't care about.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason to take a local newspaper is for the local coverage by professionals that we can trust.
For the last few months I'd begun wondering about canceling the newspaper. But what would we read when we got up in the morning? A book wasn't going to cut it. So I didn't say anything.
Then, a couple of days ago, Tom's blood boiled. In a size and starkness that would do a terrorist attack proud, the headline read, "$1 Trillion Lost!"
He said, "If I can't get some reasonable reporting from the newspaper then why am I reading it? I can get this kind of alarmism without any real facts from any television station in town."
Over dinner last night we began talking about what rag that the DMN has become. Tom put it down to the fact that newspapers felt the pressure to compete with blogs. My point, which I'd made in writing to the newspaper over a year ago, was that the way to compete is to become better. Not to put your most interesting coverage on the blog and just reference it in print. (Another gripe, can you tell?)
We began pondering alternatives. National newspapers? I'd rather die than take the NY Times. If my news came ladled out with their giant doses of opinion I could count on having a heart attack some morning.
Then we thought of the Wall Street Journal.
Yes.
Business and national ... and, as far as we could tell ... less opinion than most news sources.
The true shocker was that when I looked it up, the WSJ was $89 per year. The DMN has been on a credit card draw for some time. They talked of the low, low price of ... $3.29 per week? Wait a minute ... why that's ... that's ... that's $171.08 per YEAR.
Just serve up my heart attack now.
What a sap I've been for not catching that astronomical price.
On the other hand, I'm so excited about getting a new newspaper. 3-5 days to begin delivery ... c'mon, c'mon ... I can't wait to fire the DMN!
The ironic thing is that when The Dallas Morning News guys sit around analyzing sales figures at the end of the year, they are going to blame a bad economy, blogs, the internet, and everything else except the real reason. Their lack of passion and pride in their own product.
UPDATE
Got a letter from the Dallas Morning News yesterday. Silly me, I thought that perhaps they had noticed we canceled our paper and were asking us back. Pffft! No way.
The essence of the thing, which not only shows the depth of their self-delusion in their references to "quality you expect" but also took many paragraphs to get to:
We have taken aggressive steps to offset rising costs and reduce expenses while preserving the quality you expect from The Dallas Morning News and the convenience of home delivery. ...That makes the annual rate for the paper $252.
It is necessary that we increase 7-day subscription prices by $2.00 per month ... from $19.00 to $21.00 per month.
No decision ever looked better.
