Buzz has never really wanted to look too deeply into the brain of Robert Decherd, boss-boy and out-front man for the ownership clan at Belo Corp. and The Dallas Morning News. Buzz has an irrational fear of bottomless gray. But sometimes Buzz does have to polish off the old mail-order…
Scott Savage, until recently the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Renaissance Radio, didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He didn’t want to rehash how the new talk-radio station he’d overseen, “The Cafe” KCAF-AM (990), went belly-up last week after three days. Didn’t want to tick off…
Dude calls me from an entertainment industry trade publication, wanting information on KTVT-TV (Channel 11) anchor Rene Syler. You may have heard that Syler was just named one of the four (!) co-anchors of the revamped CBS morning chat-fest The Early Show, which places a distant third in the ratings…
I am not a business reporter, I know nothing of your “high finance” and I have only 38 minutes to write this column–yet I am going to tell you more about why Tom Hicks is selling the Dallas Stars than The Dallas Morning News has to date. So buckle up…
Tracy Rowlett knows the biggest challenge his station, KTVT Channel 11, faces next week is to avoid getting too maudlin, too caught up in the emotions of remembering the terrorist attacks of September 11. Not that they won’t interview or talk about people who were and are deeply affected by…
Never let it be said that Buzz misses a chance to brag about, well, Buzz and assorted Dallas Observer co-workers. And we need only the flimsiest premise to do so. For example, you may have seen the recent spate of stories informing you that Laura Miller, Dallas mayor and former…
When I was in college I read two publications from back to front: Newsweek and the Dallas Observer. I read Newsweek because I liked the back-page columns by George Will and Meg Greenfield, as well as the magazine’s “back of the book” arts coverage. I read the Observer this way…
The Burnt Hickory Bunch was on its way to Virginia to play in Ralph Stanley’s annual bluegrass festival, working on some new covers of mountain tunes, songs the lead singer had sung with her family forever ago in the Kentucky holler where she was raised. That singer, country star Patty…
I never understood the mohawk. As someone who has shaved his head for seven years now, I feel as though I can speak on these matters as an expert. The shaved head makes sense. Male-pattern baldness creeps in, makes a young man appear infinitesimally less sexy, so he conquers his…
In January, Public Broadcasting Service President Pat Mitchell bemoaned the decreased financial support PBS was battling in the wake of September 11. “Corporate philanthropy has all but disappeared,” she said. “We don’t know, long-term, how any of this is going to impact us, but we’re feeling some of it right…
Maryln Schwartz is ticked. The 20-year lifestyle columnist at The Dallas Morning News, who was granted “permanent medical leave” from the paper after acknowledging multiple mistakes in her columns, is upset at an item in last week’s Dallas Observer that suggests she made up names and sources in her columns…
For years, I had a yellowed, slightly torn “Calvin and Hobbes” newspaper comic strip attached to my refrigerator with a magnet. In it, 6-year-old Calvin held open a book. In a soliloquy to his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, he explained his frustration with the process of acquiring information: “The more you…
Angry at the Belo stupids this week. I know, big shock. Critics of this column (whazzup, Frisco) say I harp on the suits at Belo to the point of absurdity. Truth is, I try to write about other media happenings in this town, but the monopoly players always seem to…
Here are the things you should know about Crawfest 2002: 1.The Dallas Observer sponsors the event. 2. A pretty young lass from the sales/promotions department at said newsweekly asked if we could write something about this event. (Can we ever!) 3. This reporter feels no conflict of interest in writing…
Never let it be said that Buzz be not smart. For we be. Vewwwy smart. For proof, look no further than the story this paper ran last week about how The Dallas Morning News killed a story that involved a groin-kickin’ spat between well-known Highland Park charity types Bill and…
Astronauts don’t get nervous. Like firefighters, police officers and Mariah Carey’s publicist, they exhibit unblinking courage when most mortals would cower. Such fearlessness is necessary during re-entry when a space shuttle is traveling 5 miles per second and ripping electrons in the rarefied gases above the planet, causing the plasma…
Let’s play Big City Newspaper Editor. I’ll ask a question, and you try to answer it correctly–in other words, answer it the way a man in charge at, say, The Dallas Morning News would answer it. Got it? Good. The question is simple: If you were an editor at a…
David Hale Smith had a good story, but no one wanted to hear it. The Dallas-based literary agent was telling publishers in fall 2001 that the fading-star tale of Houston’s Enron Corp. would ultimately produce a good book. No one bit. “The book editors in New York would say things…
Last week, Buzz was surprised to find an acknowledgement in The Dallas Morning News of a fact the paper has seemingly long ignored: Food can be sensual. The paper, which engages in honest discussions of mature sexuality as often as it examines the Trinity River plan, surprised us in a…
The e-mails say it all. Rick Casey, metro columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, apologizes for not responding more quickly to an interview request but says he’s been very busy. “I’m covering a trial of a cop accused of selling drugs,” he writes. Steve Blow, longtime metro columnist for The…
Art critic-historian-essayist-Aussie badass Robert Hughes once wrote of American painter Thomas Cole that he “became something of a national culture hero…His death, opined a newspaper editorial, was ‘a public and national calamity.’ Even allowing for the high rhetorical tint required of such exequies 150 years ago, it’s hard to think…
Note to self: Federal appeals court decision in D.C. last week now allows for huge media companies like AOL Time Warner or Viacom or Knight Ridder to buy more media companies. Consider column on one of these companies buying Belo. Do research. Consider hiring research assistant. “Many of the most…
