Recently in Media Bias Category

Most of you don’t read the Dallas Morning News - and you should call yourself lucky. It’s daily reporting has changed to this format:

1. Front page story — Primarily a liberal, human interest piece that few people read. It is sometimes very good, but often very bad.
2. Content — Almost wholly derived from AP, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, or “assembled from wire content.” So why do we buy this paper when we can get the same thing from Drudge?
3. Op-Ed - Almost uniformly liberal opinions, except that the Dallas Morning News generally endorses Republicans for elections after trashing them for six months. They hold a huge grudge against Texas governor Rick Perry, but are unable to articulate why they hold him in such low self-esteem.

Overall, a sad newspaper that doesn’t quite fit with its demographics. They spend way too much time trying to be the Austin American Statesman. The Dallas Morning News ranks third in losses out of the top 25 newspapers in the country. They have a very, very bad business model and still don’t understand why they’re failing. It’s too bad — Dallas needs a good newspaper.

Top 25 Daily Newspapers in New FAS-FAX

Top 25 Daily Newspapers in New FAS-FAX
By E&P Staff
Published: October 26, 2009 9:40 AM ET

NEW YORK Here are the top 25 newspapers in the country ranked by daily (Monday-Friday) circulation for the six months ending September 2009 from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percent change compares the same six-month period ending September 2008.
Go here for more on this list by E&P Senior Editor Jennifer Saba, and here for a list of the top 25 papers on Sunday. For a list of the top 10 gainers this time around, go here.
…

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS — 263,810 — (-22.16%)

Maybe the New York Times is trying to put some fear into the newspaper union, maybe they aren’t. The Boston Globe is bleeding more than a million dollars each week, and that isn’t a sustainable business model.

From The Washington Post

The New York Times Co. said last night that it is notifying federal authorities of its plans to shut down the Boston Globe, raising the possibility that New England’s most storied newspaper could cease to exist within weeks.

After down-to-the-wire negotiations did not produce millions of dollars in union concessions, the Times Co. said that it will file today a required 60-day notice of the planned shutdown under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law.

The move could amount to a negotiating ploy to extract further concessions from the Globe’s unions, since the notice does not require the Times Co. to close the paper after 60 days. The deadline, however, would put the unions under fierce pressure to produce additional savings, and the Boston Newspaper Guild promptly called the step a “bullying” tactic by the company.

Some industry observers have expressed skepticism that Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. would want his legacy to include the shuttering of the Globe, which his company bought in 1993.

But the Times Co. itself is under strong financial pressure. It recently mortgaged its new Manhattan headquarters, borrowed $250 million from a Mexican billionaire at 14 percent interest, laid off 100 newsroom staffers and cut salaries by 5 percent.

Globe management said in a toughly worded statement: “Filing the WARN notice is a difficult step that we would like to avoid. But, unfortunately, given the state of the negotiations, it is one we must be prepared to take.”

The paper’s circulation dropped 14 percent in the most recent six-month period. The Globe is expected to lose $85 million this year, the company says.