Editor’s note: this post was altered after it was published. For an explanation, go here.
The Dallas Express was once an important newspaper here. When you google “Dallas Express newspaper,” you get pages and pages of results that address that outlet’s role in the city and beyond. From UNT’s Portal to Texas History:
Self-proclaimed as “the South’s Oldest and Largest Negro Newspaper,” the Dallas Express traces its roots to 1892, when William E. King began publishing the Dallas Bee. Renamed the Dallas Express in 1893, the paper served as an advocate for blacks in Dallas and throughout the South for over 70 years.
Although little exists to document the paper’s early years, the Express became one of the most influential black publications in Texas in the decades leading up to the Great Depression.
So it is maddening to see what has now landed at the URL dallasexpress.com. It is a site run by a Chicago-based operation called Metric Media News that owns hundreds of such dubious news sites all across the country. The New York Times and the Columbia Journalism Review both exposed this. Our Peter Simek wrote about it when another Metric Media site called Dallas Media Wire popped up here. Read Peter’s post for a fuller understanding of how nasty this stuff is. The industry term for it, “pink slime,” is an apt one (that’s also the term for a meat-processing byproduct).
People, be careful with what you read and share. And watch out if a “reporter” from what sounds like a community newspaper calls you. Check their site at the very bottom. When there isn’t any information under the “contact” or “about us” links, that’s your first clue. If the site anywhere has the words “Metric Media” on it, that’s your second clue.
Don’t consume pink slime.
