Blogs

It's really too bad that the Houston Chronicle abandoned the concept of selling newspapers to focus on selling advertising. It's left leaning agenda and bias as well as the tanking of good stories that don't fit it's political mold; using the front page to editorialize; and just being plain wrong and stupid has left most of the buying public to go elsewhere for news.
People need a reason the buy a newspaper but the Chronicle is stubbornly refusing to cater to its audience.
The television networks are in the same boat. The quality of programming is junk and people are using their time for other activities.

The Chronicle has a left-leaning bias? The same paper that has yet to find a Bush it won't endorse for office? The same paper that thinks Kay Bailey Hutchinson is a moderate? If the Chron is left-leaning, I'd really hate to see a right-leaning paper.

Yeah, it always gets me when folks say the Chron has a left-wing bias. They freakin' endorsed W in 2004, straight up.

Kind of makes you wonder what those people consider the middle.

"MLK: African-American or Anti-American?"

Have the Duke and John Royal ever read a Chronicle front page story? Everyone I have ever read starts on the front page with a very left leaning bias and its not till 2 paragraphs from the end in the middle of the paper that you get the real truth.

If the Chron had any bias, it might at least be interesting. It's hard to find an agenda in wire service rips and incoherent junior reporting.

A Right lean would enrage me. A Left lean would amuse me. Creative, insightful reporting would engage me. The Chron bores me.

Does Santiago know the Chron has a website? Why doesn't he cite an example rather than just speaking in broad generalities? If every story he has ever read starts with a left-leaning bias, he should have no trouble finding an example.

As part of its announced force reduction, the Chronicle and Steve McVickers have parted ways.

This is very unfortunate for the public, the criminal justice system and the Chronicle. Steve was the driving force in the Chronicle's reporting of the crime lab problems. He was always willing to take a look at stories that other reporters would blow off because they required real work Unlike many of the reporters at the Chronicle and elsewhere, he was always willing to dig deeper and do more work to produce a story that was factually accurate and got to the heart of the issues.

Steve should have been one of the 19 out of 20 that they kept. It is unfortunate, but I know that many judges and prosecutors will be very happy with the decision. I am disappointed in the Chronicle.

Troy

Gosh, lets look at todays posting, maybe the duke can find it too, titled IN THE END,HUGHES TO LEAVE JOB UNFINISHED. Does it take half way through the article to say she did a good job or do the words battered and global disapproval
in the first paragraph seem pro-Bush? I think you are fighting a losing battle.

Okay, let's look at the beginning to that article. I've pasted some of it below. Are you saying that since it starts as it does, it's liberal? What would be middle of the road for you?

"Karen Hughes was so awesome! I wonder if she had sex with George Bush, because he is so sexy. I love George Bush."

Or would this seem middle of the road?

"In the end, Hughes to leave job unfinished
Bush insider wins praise for her efforts to boost America's image in world

By RICHARD S. DUNHAM
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

Recommend
RESOURCES
Turnover like Survivor: Texas

Karen Hughes, the former Texas television reporter and Republican message master assigned by President Bush to improve America's battered image around the world, said Wednesday she will leave her job at the end of the year knowing that global disapproval of U.S. foreign policy remains high.

Hughes, a longtime confidante of the president, said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle that she realized efforts to reverse international perceptions of America will take "a matter of decades and not of days."

"Much like the Cold War, what we are facing today is a generational challenge," said Hughes. "At a time of war, I knew that public opinion polls were not going to change in a couple of years."

But Hughes, 50, who has served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs since July 2005, said she is leaving because she has completed an ambitious institutional reorganization of the country's fragmented image-building efforts.

Hughes has rebuilt outreach programs that were dismantled a decade ago when foreign Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., eliminated the U.S. Information Agency at the end of the Cold War.

In addition, Hughes said, her travel to 40 nations and a weekly commute from Texas were tough on her husband, Jerry, who remained in Austin.

"It got harder and harder to go to the airport on Sunday afternoon and come back to Washington," Hughes said. "I just want to live in the same city with my husband."

A lawyer friend in Houston had a framed sign on the wall behind his desk. It read "Have you noticed that the lawyer NEVER goes to jail?"
Well, the newspaper business is exactly the same. The first people "downsized" or whatever you care to call it, are the reporters, not the high-paid execs. And these suits are the ones who control the look and content of the newspaper!
As a former employee of both daily papers I was able to see and hear reasons why stories and pictures were published or relegated to the digital trash.
The editorial leanings were decided in some boardroom by the "suits." NOT reporters.
The memo to staff does not say, "We are operating at a profit loss." That memo seems to say the usual, the Hearst Company is not making as much money as they'd LIKE.
Come Christmas week, they will still receive their hand-delivered "bonus checks," and the grunts will get ashes and switches.
Sadly, the Chronicle layout and design looks like a circus act. Visually, it is over-powering.
Right or wrong, even sports teams rid themselves of coaches, NOT the players! They realize that without a full team they'll end up at the bottom of the standings for decades.
Until Chronicle mid and upper-level managers are replaced with twenty or thirty-somethings, things will remain the same, the paper will muddle along and possibly someone like Rupert Murdock will grab it and you will REALLY see the product really lean right!