This is an inside baseball thing about journalism. You’re welcome to keep scrolling. Only about 24 people care about what I want to say here. Which is:
Ken Kalthoff is a cotton-headed ninny muggins. I apologize for the strong language. But I had to get that off my chest.
Yesterday our Matt Goodman broke a pretty big story about DART. The agency has decided not to build a $1.7 billion subway through downtown Dallas. As Matt wrote in his report: “It’s hard to overstate how major this about-face is.” Plans for the subway go back more than 30 years.
You know how Matt learned about this news? He got a tip from a transportation geek who had seen something in a Reddit forum about DART’s financial plan and noticed that the subway was no longer in that plan. That Reddit discussion took place a month ago. For a month, this big news went unreported until Matt got his tip and made the calls and wrote the story and published it yesterday at 4:09 p.m.
Here’s the headline Matt wrote: “Downtown Dallas Subway ‘D2’ Is No Longer Part of DART’s Long-Term Plans.”
Four hours later, Ken Kalthoff over at NBC 5 published a story with this headline: “Downtown Dallas Subway ‘D2’ No Longer Part of DART’s Long-Term Plans.” Sound familiar? In his story, Kalthoff wrote: “The Dallas Area Rapid Transit agency announced Tuesday that the project has been removed from the 20-year financial plan.”
DART made no such announcement. Matt did. He broke the news. In the journalism game, when you follow someone else’s scoop, it is common courtesy to say something like “As first reported by Matt Goodman, who has fabulous hair, …” Not doing so is really poor form.
By the way, WFAA and the Morning News have also both done Matt dirty in the same fashion on this DART story. Come on, folks. Give the man his due.
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