Is there any journalism trope more tiresome than bothsidesing? Ducking the hard task of investigating the facts by just throwing up your hands and saying “different people disagree” is so plainly egregious that even the dictionary calls it out as reprehensible, and yet it’s still a staple of our daily news coverage. Here it is again, in today’s Dallas Morning News story on attempts to get a Dallas Stars arena funded in Plano, Texas:
The debate underscores the competing views of the city’s identity — a suburban community or an entertainment destination — and who should pay for the difference. City officials see the project as a way to keep Plano vibrant. Some residents see it as a departure from the city’s character.
Proponents are in favor, opponents are opposed! Somebody paid $130,000 for journalism school to earn the privilege to write that.
To its credit, the Morning News story does include a modicum of actual reporting on the facts of the deal, though “a tax increment refinancing zone to contribute $700 million toward the project” is not the clearest explanation of taking all the property tax payments in and around the arena and kicking them back to Stars owner Tom Gaglardi to pay for construction, and “the November proposition wouldn’t set the amount of the taxes and city leaders can choose which to levy” is barely English, let alone fiscal analysis. But mostly it relies on advocates for and against the arena funding ballot measure to make the case for why this is a good deal or not, which is an abdication of what journalism is supposed to do: find out facts, and inform readers about them.
I don’t want to be too hard on the reporter here: She’s only two years out of college (she didn’t actually pay for an advanced J-school degree, good on her) and doubtless wasn’t the one who picked the assignment to go report on the smoke and not the fire. But the Morning News really should be doing better here: Over the last three months, its only stories about the proposed Stars arena have been about what neighbors said at community meetings, what neighbors said at a community open house, what stores are closing at the mall targeted for the arena construction, and what the team’s architect says about how great the arena will be. None of that comes close to informing voters on what they need to decide in November — is it worth handing over $700 million worth of future tax money to Gaglardi to fund his team’s new home? — but then, drawing conclusions about that might anger local business leaders and advertisers, best just to stick to recounting all the shouting and leaving it up to readers to decide who’s right, without the benefit of hearing what the numbers say.
With the employment carnage that’s happened to reporters over the last two decades, I”m mildly surprised that someone two years out of college is even getting a staff job at a daily in major metropolitan area.
According to Wikipedia, the Dallas Morning News is owned by Hearst Communications, which only has annual revenue of $13 billion. You want them to pay for reporters with journalism degrees to spend time researching topics?
“The company was founded by William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper owner who was most well known for his use of yellow journalism.”
To be clear, the reporter here has an undergraduate journalism degree — she just didn’t pay six figures for a graduate journalism degree when all she was going to get to do was “record, have Otter.ai transcribe, cut, paste.”
Yeah, but from GEORGIA.
At least one editor, I assume, went through the reporter’s story before it was posted. Someone in charge edited it and, perhaps, discussed it with the reporter. And it still ran without much body to it.
“But the Morning News really should be doing better here”
Listen… these publications and media outlets (TV, radio, and otherwise) ALL know that they can do better. They’re simply choosing not to. It’s kinda surprising to me that a lot of people — including those much smarter than me — are somehow unable to make that distinction.
Sure, same as health insurance companies could be, you know, providing us with health care instead of focusing on ways to deny it. But when corporations refuse to do the most basic jobs we’re paying them for, and there are no competitors we can choose to patronize instead, public shaming is all we have left. (Well, that and Luigi-ing, but there are legal and ethical problems there.)
Public shaming was far more effective when these institutions (and the people running them) could actually feel shame. Alas, this is 2026, and those same institutions have mostly insulated themselves from even the mildest consequences of wrongdoing, and there are even whole-ass kinks now centering on shame and humiliation.
Given all this, the only things we truly do have left are just derision, disdain, and outright vitriol. And rage tends to run out quite rapidly as a source of fuel.
Luigi-ing is too nice.
I prefer Qadaffi’ing them.
Or Mario-ing. They’ll never see the koopa shells coming.
From my small sample size, the thing that drives visitors to Plano, is the presence of a Brandy Melville store. Doubt they got $700 million subsidy.