Dispatches from Dallas – Page 9 – News and opinionating from the Metroplex.

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.

Closing my tabs – 2025 01 05

Some things I read and found interesting recently:

‘Take this as a warning’: AG Paxton to visit Tyler in ‘accountability’ tour : Collin County’s favorite son is out threatening people to make them vote for David Cook (R-Mansfield) for Speaker.
The biggest cybersecurity and cyberattack stories of 2024 : While we were probably touched by more than one of them, number 8 was a direct pain in our butt when Spouse and I bought a new car. Coincidentally, Spouse and I both worked for CDK’s predecessor, the Dealer Services division of ADP, back around the turn of the century.
Once dismissed as frivolous, ‘romancelandia’ is getting political : I expected this story to be about the troubles of the Romance Writers of America; it’s about romance writers and fans in the US opposing book bans and running for office.
Federal courts won’t refer Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to attorney general over ethics : It’s not like a Trump Department of Justice would do anything about Thomas, but it’s disappointing anyway. See also The Reprobate Review: Announcing The Winners Of The 2024 Golden Duke Awards, where the Talking Points Memo judges awarded the Duke for best general interest scandal to John Roberts and the conservative justices.
A Documentary About a Texas Death Row Inmate is Now an Oscar Contender : The documentary is about John Henry Ramirez, who was executed in 2022, but the story touches on a lot of other topics to do with Texas and our record in state-sanctioned killing.
Related: Texas Has Dug a Deep Hole It Can’t Escape on a Particularly Thorny Issue : Quinn Yeargain on the Robert Roberson death penalty case and the surrounding politics in Slate.
A Bit More on the Cybertruck Story : Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo confirms a thing we know is generally true, which is that domestic terrorists almost always have a history of abusing women before they move on to larger forms of terrorism.
America’s Drunkest and Driest Counties : Dallas is about half a percent over the national average and Tarrant is about half a percent under.
Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk : Glad to see this laid out by a retired senior officer in a way that the New York Times reader can understand, but also, really? Y’all needed someone to tell you this?
TERFs, Trans Mascs, and Two Steve Feminism : Jude Doyle on both a recent social media fight I missed and larger topics around gender essentialism, trans men, and feminism. I can’t do Doyle’s arguments justice, so I suggest you read the whole thing.
Faith on the Hill – The religious composition of the 119th Congress : 87% are Christian of one stripe or another. There are no open atheists in this particular foxhole, but there were one Humanist, three religiously-unaffiliated folks, and 21 who were classed as “don’t know/refused”. From Pew Research.

Good-bye and hello, as always.

I’m your host, Ginger. I used to blog about politics in the early oughts, in the days when we called it “war blogging”, several wars ago during the Bush II administration. Now I live in Dallas instead of Houston, I’m still interested in the doings in my city, county, state, and country, and I’m older and hopefully wiser. I’ve worked over the years as a clerk in a comic book and roleplaying game store, an assistant to an immigration lawyer, and a tech writer. My degree is in history, and the topic of my master’s thesis was the development of the entail from the maritagium under English common law. Agewise I’m at the top end of Generation X, but just because I’m getting older doesn’t mean I have to ossify.

I’ve been writing weekly dispatches for my friend Chuck’s blog for a couple of years now after a while of sending him stories from our local news that I thought needed covering. Now that’s not enough, so I’m starting to blog again.

What I expect you’ll find here: news and opinions, with a particular focus on the Metroplex, but not excluding other parts of the state, particularly Houston and Austin, where I have also lived; some history, some feminism, some disability- and health-related news, some music, some reviews of media I’m interested in, and always some random posts that fit in none of the above categories.

When I’m not blogging, I read a lot of books, go to concerts, eat some fine food, and play tabletop roleplaying games. All of this happens with the support of a long-suffering spouse and three cats: Mr Alfonso, Miss Berry, and Mr Sid.

(The title is a quote from The Courts of Chaos, by Roger Zelazny.)