Category: Sources

Sources/Resources – The Dallas Observer

The Dallas Observer has been around since 1980 and is your pretty typical New Times/Voice Media Group free local alternative paper, with good cultural coverage of the Metroplex centered on Dallas. Cultural coverage for the Generation X/Xennial types these papers are aimed at includes politics as well as music and restaurant previews and reviews. While I read the Observer mostly for the the latter group of stories, I do enjoy the former as well.

The Dallas Observer (which I note to avoid people confusing it with the Texas Observer, a very different publication) is definitely your cynical Gen X with a heart of gold politically. They report details of stories you might miss otherwise, and do a fair amount of reader reaction, and not just reading what people said on Xitter. It’s generally not my first source for a big story, but I find it pretty reliable overall. Also, unlike the DMN and the Star-Telegram, it’s not paywalled, just nagwalled.

Sources/Resources – The Texas Tribune

The Texas Tribune is an online nonprofit journalism outlet that covers news throughout the state. It was founded in 2009; everybody who’s anybody in nonprofits and foundations in Texas has given them some money. In addition to their journalism, they put together a lot of events, most importantly the Texas Tribune Festival.

Two of the three co-founders were well-known Texas journalists; Evan Smith left the editor’s job at Texas Monthly to start the Tribune and Ross Ramsey also had a long career in journalism in Dallas and Houston. (The other guy was the money man.) The Tribune doesn’t have an editorial section at all. They collaborate with other journalism non-profits like ProPublica on big stories, and have broken a few on their own.

I’ve been reading the Tribune since they started publishing and I find them informative and reliable. I haven’t been a regular donor, but I do read their newsletter every morning and find it a valuable resource, so I probably ought to kick in at some point. In addition to their own stories, the Tribune also points out a handful of pieces by other outlets every day. That’s the kind of thing that makes me like and trust their judgement.

Sources/Resources: The Dallas Express

Up to now I’ve been talking about news sources I read or at least wouldn’t turn up my nose at when they turn up on Google. Today I’m going to talk about one that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole other than to check out the two-minute hate from our billionaire would-be overlords. That’s the Dallas Express, the pink slime subsidiary of Monty Bennett, a local hotel magnate with political aspirations and money to burn.

The Express is built on the good name of a Black newspaper that covered Dallas from 1892 to 1970. The current operation was founded four years ago. The history is covered pretty nicely in this Texas Observer article by Steven Monacelli from 2023. There’s also quite a bit more about Bennett and the Observer in this profile of Bennett detailing his involvement in the Dallas HERO astroturf group that was behind Props S, T, and U on the Dallas charter amendment ballot last November. (Bennett lives in Highland Park, of course, so he’s not even in the city of Dallas.) The gist of the 2024 article is that Bennett uses paid protestors to get at his enemies, then reports on the protests and complains that no other press outlet is covering them. Regular readers will also notice that Pete Marocco is mentioned in the 2024 article in connection with Dallas HERO, where he was parked for some of the time between his last stint at USAID and his current job destroying it.

The point here is that the Dallas Express, despite claiming to be a nonprofit and an objective news source, is anything but. It’s a vanity project of Monty Bennett and nothing you read there should be taken seriously other than as a signpost to what Bennett and his cronies want.

Sources/Resources: Local TV stations

I don’t watch TV at all (not a snob thing; my computer feeds me plenty of idiot stuff) but I do read the local stations’ news sites for coverage of various topics.

WFAA is Dallas’ ABC affiliate and partners with the DMN. It’s independently owned along with a UHF counterpart (KFAA), making Dallas the largest major media market to have an independently-owned station broadcasting one of the “big four” network feeds (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox). I subscribe to their politics feef and regularly see other platforms like the Texas Tribune linking to them. I feel like they’re pretty reliable for coverage and they regularly have details that other outlets don’t get.

KERA is also the name of the local PBS television station as well as the NPR radio affiliate. As I mentioned last week, I find them very reliable.

KXAS, aka NBCDFW, is the local NBC affiliate. I see links to them occasionally and find them in google searches for various local news topics. I don’t have a strong opinion about them either way.

KTVT and KTXA are two branches of the CBS network in Houston, both owned by the network. Their news site links back to the Texas directory of the national CBS site. I don’t see them linked very often and I don’t have a strong sense about their local coverage.

KDFW aka “Fox 4” is the local Fox affiliate; it was originally owned by the now-defunct Dallas Times-Herald and passed through various hands including many years as a CBS affiliate. Fox has owned the station since 1996. I don’t seek out their coverage but occasionally I see links to them or find something that nobody else has when I’m googling for local stories about a specific topic. They’re not national Fox news, but I’m just a little wary of them as a source.

Resources/Sources: KERA

KERA, our local public broadcasting news station, has a news site that’s one of the more reliable sources for local metroplex news. The nice thing about KERA, along with their colleagues at the Fort Worth Report and its spin-off the Arlington Report, is that they cover not just the city news in Dallas and Fort Worth, but across the Metroplex and throughout the suburbs. They’re particularly important for researching elections and school district news outside DISD and FWISD.

KERA is an NPR station (along with its sister station, KXT, which is the Gen X music station) and so their biases are obvious. I don’t listen to them in the car–KXT is my station of choice–but their local news is NPR quality and I never hesitate to use the news I find there.

Resources/Sources: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The Star-Telegram, or the Startlegram, as the late Molly Ivins used to call it, is the second-largest newspaper in the Metroplex. It used to be the second-largest daily, but as of last fall it only prints a physical paper three times a week. The web site is updated constantly, though. It’s owned by McClatchy Media Company, a conglomerate that also owns about 30 newspapers and some magazines.

If I had to say what sort of reader the Star-Telegram is aimed at, I’d say it’s more of a casual reader than the DMN. The Star-Telegram focuses more on sports, weather, and entertainment and less on politics and business news than the DMN. Their editorial slant is further to the right with a couple of exceptions, including their newest columnist, whose work I have enjoyed so far. (He’s Black and frankly, the Star-Telegram needed to expand their editorial vision beyond the diversity of conservative white women.)

I receive the Star-Telegram’s morning newsletter and I think they focus on what the most-read stories were yesterday, which is why I notice the focus on sports and weather. Sometimes the newsletter is all about the weather and the game that were going to happen last night. I find a quick scan of the front page gets me more useful information about local and state news.

Their news stories are a little shorter and a little less informative than the DMN but they’re still worthwhile to read and I do learn from them. Their editorial section is useful to read if I want to know what the talk radio crowd is thinking, and occasionally they have local politicians and newsmakers writing op-eds as well.

I refer to and link the Star-Telegram regularly. They are my second-choice newspaper after the DMN, but I still think they’re worth paying for.

Resources/Sources: The Dallas Morning News (DMN)

The Dallas Morning News is the largest newspaper in the Metroplex and, as of October 2024, when the Fort Worth Star-Telegram scaled back to three paper editions a week, the only one that publishes daily paper editions. It’s owned by a public corporation in the print-side company created when the Belo media corporation separated its print and broadcast holdings. A Florida billionaire recently bought up enough of the holding company that he’s its second-largest shareholder. That change doesn’t seem to have made a dent in the news coverage or the editorial stance (yet).

If I had to say what sort of reader the DMN is aimed at, I’d say it’s the sensible country club Republican: the George W Bush “compassionate conservative” who thinks government should be run like a business. The sort of person who practices individual charity but doesn’t believe in high taxes for social welfare, other than making sure the public facilities in their own neighborhood are all nice. They’re not pro-MAGA, which gets them called pinko commies by MAGA types, but they endorse more Republicans than Democrats.

Their local reporting isn’t always super-speedy on breaking news, but if I wait a day to read up about a news story, I expect the DMN to have the best version. When they do investigative work, it’s good. I don’t think they spike big stories based on politics but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t find small stories that run against their editorial sense too unimportant to publish.

I refer to and link the DMN regularly. I pay them for a digital-only subscription. If I could only manage one newspaper subscription locally, it would be the DMN.