Fort Worth Star-Telegram Defends Itself

This morning one of my one or two longtime readers, LC, sent me an email pointing me to a column from what I believe was last Sunday's Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Those same one or two longtime readers may remember I've complained about this newspaper before. Usually my complaints were regarding the paper's tendency towards groundless Chamber of Commerce boosterism that often seemed embarrassingly ridiculous to me.

One of my other issues with the Star-Telegram was over mistakes I'd spot in articles, most frequently by one of their reporters named Anne Tinsley. I read the now dead Seattle P-I for a long long time. It covered an area I'd lived in all my life. I do not recollect ever reading something in the P-I that I knew to be wrong. Yet here in Fort Worth, an area I've not lived in all that long, I spotted numerous errors in articles in the Star-Telegram.

One that springs to mind was regarding a new section of paved trail that had opened in Arlington's River Legacy Park. First off there was the part of the article that bragged that somehow Fort Worth's paved trails had inspired Arlington's infinitely superior trails. But the galling part was the writer had key facts wrong. The most important error being that the article said the new section of trail ran all the way to 360.

Two days after reading that I was on that very trail, at its end. There was a guy standing there, looking perplexed. He asked me how do you get to 360? I asked him if he got the idea it did from the Star-Telegram. He had. He had told friends, heading south on 360, to pick him up at Trinity Boulevard, because he wanted to jog a new trail. That didn't exist.

And now this column about the Star-Telegram not going away. The columnist, J.R. Labbe was inspired to come to the defense of the Star-Telegram due to the paper being on a list of doomed newspapers.

Here's a choice bit...

Now hear this, you East Coast magazine writers, TV news readers and North Texas radio listeners: The Star-Telegram is not fixin’ to disappear.

On the contrary, the news of our demise, as outlined in last week’s Time magazine and echoed in local TV and radio reports, was greatly exaggerated.

If you’ve lived in the Metroplex more than 20 minutes, then you know that the only time Fort Worth shares billing with Dallas is when people use the official name of the airport. Only outsiders, Nielsen ratings and lazy magazine writers think "Dallas-Fort Worth" is one big town.

Now, I've lived here for awhile now. It is like one big town. The locals call it the Metroplex. With 2 really big towns. One being Dallas, with its Dallas Morning News, to which I am now a subscriber, and which is like the Big City newspapers I've always known, and the other big town being Fort Worth, with its Star-Telegram, to which I no longer subscribe and which is more like a little town's paper than a Big City paper.

Another choice bit....

No, a newcomer can’t replace the century of institutional knowledge that resides within the walls of the Star-Telegram.

It can’t develop overnight a stable of some of the most knowledgeable members of the community on a broad range of issues, people who have excellent writing and presentation skills, who directly connect their newspaper daily with the community they serve. Skilled and trained journalists who have regular access to the elected, the elite, the educated and the electorate.

Century of institutional knowledge? Within its walls? As I understand it the Star-Telegram is trying to sell those walls. Skilled journalists connecting their newspaper with the community they serve? I know a lot of people who feel ill-served by this service.

And then this other choice bit...

The Star-Telegram remains committed to providing Tarrant County residents the most comprehensive local news and commentary they can find — and we’ve got the largest news-gathering team of any media outlet in Fort Worth working on it every day.

Shoot, folks can get national and international news from lots of places. But no other media company knows — or cares — about Fort Worth and Tarrant County like we do.

I know of people in Haltom City who would love it if the Star-Telegram would focus some of their vast news-gathering team and show some of that caring for people trying to get something done about the deadly flooding on Fossil Creek. How about an editorial opining that maybe we should divert some money to fixing a problem that has actually killed people before possibly wasting money on a possible boondoggle known as the Trinity River Vision?

Or how about focusing some light on Mayor Moncrief's conflicts of interest in the way Fort Worth's actual responsible newspaper of record, FW Weekly, does?

The Star-Telegram's Publisher, Gary Wortel, told Labbe that the paper is a very profitable company. I'm sure Labbe, crack journalist that she is, must have asked Wortel why, if the paper is so profitable, have so many people been laid off, why has the paper shrunk so much, why have so many columnists been cut from the editorial pages? Or is it temporarily in the black due to all those cutbacks?

If you are tired of the ever shrinking Star-Telegram go to the Dallas Morning News and subscribe. You'll get a Big City newspaper that covers all of the Metroplex and seems to do a good accurate job of it. They even cover Fort Worth with absolutely none of that weird snooty inferiority complex tone that permeates way too often when an article in the Star-Telegram references Dallas.

Go here if you want to read the entire column by Ms. Labbe.