Extra! Extra!
Bob Mong knows he's facing many challenges, and he certainly didn't ask me what I'd do if I were in charge of the Dallas Morning News. I thought I'd offer some nickel advice anyway.
Do away with the policy of presenting both sides of a story before that story jumps to another page. The policy ensures fairness, but it frequently gets in the way of telling a story in narrative form. Reporters can still be fair. Readers are smarter than editors sometimes give them credit for. Besides, there's a reason the Fox News channel is beating the pants off CNN, and fairness has nothing to do with it.
Instead of boosting Dallas' bid for the Olympics, as most of the stories on the Boeing move seemed to do, focus more reporting on the potential downside of bidding for the 2012 Olympics. There are several details in Beijing's designation as the site of the 2008 Olympics that bear scrutiny. Readers deserve to know how much it costs taxpayers to pursue the Olympics, much less host them. Less than a year after the last summer Olympics, Sydney's facilities are being underutilized to the point it's costing the city and Australia millions in maintenance expenses. For all the deserved praise given the sports section, more emphasis by executive sports editor Dave Smith on investigative reporting would make it even better. You could start with how much it will cost Arlington or Irving taxpayers to accommodate Jerry Jones's proposed new Cowboys stadium.
Restore the books section to just books. You can call the placement of CD music reviews in a column opposite book reviews convergence, but the paper isn't a Barnes and Noble.
Give Discoveries more space again. Shrinking pages are understandable in the current economic climate, but some sections deserve more play regardless of cost. The science section is a great learning tool for classrooms and the most-clipped part of the paper, as far as I'm concerned. That's value that bean counters cannot quantify.
Ditch the CueCat. So Belo's investment didn't pay off because readers didn't use the free glorified bar code scanner to get additional information on stories. Accept the facts that the device is clunky to use and happens to be more invasive of privacy than the average computer cookie. The space saved would be better utilized by more stories.
Create an environment and pay scale so that your Pulitzer Prize winners will want to stay at the paper rather than jump elsewhere. Coddle them. Nurture them. Inspire them to dig deeper. Salaries for reporters may be the highest in Texas, but the drive to attain excellence seems to have flagged since the Times Herald folded.
Watch your back. If there's no newspaper war anymore, and it's guerrilla warfare as you say it is, fight like a guerrilla. Electronic media and other print journals including the Star-Telegram, the Houston Chronicle, and the Dallas Observer (the most consistent Morning News critic that once ran a regular column called BeloWatch) all have the potential to land a missile in your backyard in the form of a scoop. Fight them all, tooth and nail. Make the Star-Telegram the enemy, because it is giving you a run for your money, especially in Metroplex sports and business coverage. It wouldn't hurt to let your sports columnists voice stronger opinions, like your wizened sage Blackie Sherrod and former employee Randy Galloway (now of the Star-Telegram) do. And fight your regional rival, the Houston Chronicle, by covering its turf as thoroughly as your own.
Do away with the policy of presenting both sides of a story before that story jumps to another page. The policy ensures fairness, but it frequently gets in the way of telling a story in narrative form. Reporters can still be fair. Readers are smarter than editors sometimes give them credit for. Besides, there's a reason the Fox News channel is beating the pants off CNN, and fairness has nothing to do with it.
Instead of boosting Dallas' bid for the Olympics, as most of the stories on the Boeing move seemed to do, focus more reporting on the potential downside of bidding for the 2012 Olympics. There are several details in Beijing's designation as the site of the 2008 Olympics that bear scrutiny. Readers deserve to know how much it costs taxpayers to pursue the Olympics, much less host them. Less than a year after the last summer Olympics, Sydney's facilities are being underutilized to the point it's costing the city and Australia millions in maintenance expenses. For all the deserved praise given the sports section, more emphasis by executive sports editor Dave Smith on investigative reporting would make it even better. You could start with how much it will cost Arlington or Irving taxpayers to accommodate Jerry Jones's proposed new Cowboys stadium.
Restore the books section to just books. You can call the placement of CD music reviews in a column opposite book reviews convergence, but the paper isn't a Barnes and Noble.
Give Discoveries more space again. Shrinking pages are understandable in the current economic climate, but some sections deserve more play regardless of cost. The science section is a great learning tool for classrooms and the most-clipped part of the paper, as far as I'm concerned. That's value that bean counters cannot quantify.
Ditch the CueCat. So Belo's investment didn't pay off because readers didn't use the free glorified bar code scanner to get additional information on stories. Accept the facts that the device is clunky to use and happens to be more invasive of privacy than the average computer cookie. The space saved would be better utilized by more stories.
Create an environment and pay scale so that your Pulitzer Prize winners will want to stay at the paper rather than jump elsewhere. Coddle them. Nurture them. Inspire them to dig deeper. Salaries for reporters may be the highest in Texas, but the drive to attain excellence seems to have flagged since the Times Herald folded.
Watch your back. If there's no newspaper war anymore, and it's guerrilla warfare as you say it is, fight like a guerrilla. Electronic media and other print journals including the Star-Telegram, the Houston Chronicle, and the Dallas Observer (the most consistent Morning News critic that once ran a regular column called BeloWatch) all have the potential to land a missile in your backyard in the form of a scoop. Fight them all, tooth and nail. Make the Star-Telegram the enemy, because it is giving you a run for your money, especially in Metroplex sports and business coverage. It wouldn't hurt to let your sports columnists voice stronger opinions, like your wizened sage Blackie Sherrod and former employee Randy Galloway (now of the Star-Telegram) do. And fight your regional rival, the Houston Chronicle, by covering its turf as thoroughly as your own.
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