Missed opportunities

When I first started this blog, I had a short-lived gimmick called "What you missed in today's Dallas Morning News." I'd post something snarky about the silliness of the DMN's content that day. I had originally envisioned that as a feature for our print edition, but gave up on it altogether after awhile, because although there was no shortage of material, the joke was always the same:

Irrelevant content. Lack of local coverage.

Today's paper, though, inspired me to dust off the snark-ometer.

Front page story: Some experts say that voters care about local issues and that might effect their votes in the upcoming presidential election.

Stop the presses! Meanwhile the Frost-Sessions debate is relegated to an interior page of Metro.

Then, in the thumbs up/down section of the Editorial pages, we get this gem:

W stands for Whoopee
Good news for Texans and other Red Staters: An ABC News Primetime Live survey found that Republicans are happier with their sex lives than Democrats. Sure, some put-out Dems tried to cold-shower the poll, claiming that the randy right is simply too easily satisfied. Could be, but we're betting that Republican Romeos love the stereotype-smashing pleasure of the phrase, "Are you a conservative, or are you just happy to see me?"

Much has been made about improvements to the DMN editorial page under the regime of Keven Ann Willey, with substantial props also going out to Rod Dreher. I won't deny that I see more diversity of opinion on the page than was there a couple years ago; and they now occasionally take a half-assed stand as opposed to no stand at all. But there's still a dearth of edge and local opinion and there's still far too much over-qualification of every stand taken. I still know that when I talk to knowledgable local media people, they rank the editorial page, metro and the business section as our biggest opportunities to compete.

I don't know Willey and I've only met Dreher once, but I have read their stuff. My perception is that they'll never be able to create a great edit page under a Belo regime. When the mandate is "be better, but still be sure not to offend anyone," you get lame jokes like the Whoopee line above from people who are capable of so much more.