As previously noted, the best day for reading Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper is Saturday. That’s when the bosses can float trial balloons, do favors for advertisers and politicians, and stick in news that they don’t necessarily want people to see.
Last Saturday had such a story. It was about the Trinity toll road story, and was buried on page 10B — which means only Belo-ologists like myself would have noticed it. I don’t pretend to understand the story. As near as I can tell, the toll road will either be finished ahead of schedule or it won’t. And if it is, parts of it may not be built. All in all, the story is a splendid example of why no one reads newspapers any more. One paragraph is a 42-word sentence that made my head hurt.
Why the confusion? The article is written in a combination of committee-speak, engineerese, and boosterism. The last two are fairly self-explanatory. Committee-speak, especially for newspapers, means that after the reporter wrote the story, it was sent to the bosses to be edited instead of being given to a copy editor.
Two other highlights of the story:
• The description of the Trinity project, which "calls for transforming the barren Trinity River channel into a showcase downtown park." Needless to say, that left me speechless.
• The continued Cassandra-ing of city councilwoman Angela Hunt, who led the referendum against the toll road. Hunt gets the final five paragraphs of this very long story, which really didn’t need to quote her at all. It’s as if The News doesn’t want to let Hunt — or its readers — forget that the Trinity vote didn’t win.
