EDITOR’S PAGE

SOMETIMES WE journalists find ourselves sitting at our typewriters and asking ourselves, “Is anybody out there reading this?” We certainly got a quick answer to that question with our February coverage of the plight of the city’s original hometown airline. Since the publication of “Bad Times at Braniff,” we’ve been the recipients of the largest and best-organized letter-writing campaign I’ve ever seen.

We’ve had literally hundreds of letters, (almost all from Braniff employees) crying foul about our coverage and criticizing us for “kicking Braniff when it’s down” and “practicing yellow journalism against a good hometown business that deserves community support.” (A sampling of the Braniff letters begins on page 8.) Some of the letters are just angry babblings, handwritten catharsis for people who have seen their livelihood threatened as they watch their company totter on the brink of financial disaster. But most of the letters are well thought out, responsible statements. They raise several key questions to which I feel compelled to respond:

Why pick on a hometown company? D Magazine is not a chamber of commerce journal (we already have an excellent one in Dallas); we are a city magazine dedicated to fair, aggressive journalism. We feel the public has a right to know every fact we can find out about public companies like Braniff, which affect the economy of the entire community. The fact that Braniff is a hometown business is immaterial. We’d write the same aggressive report about any company that had such a big effect on our community, whether it was based in Dallas or Duluth. While as citizens of this community we all wish Braniff the best, as journalists it is our duty to be neither for nor against Bran-iff. Our job is to report what we find. It was documented public knowledge that Braniff was in a severe financial crisis-the result of poor management -long before our reporters ever set foot in the Braniff corporate headquarters. Our goal in publishing the story was to provide this community with the most detailed accounting possible of what had happened to the airline and what the future holds for the company.

Why was the Braniff story so inaccurate and slanted? It was neither. The litany of complaints we received from Braniff employees centers on one fact in our 13,000-word report: The value of the 15 Boeing 727’s that Braniff sold to American Airlines in order to make a $30 million payment on a loan acquired to meet operating expenses. And I should point out that American and Braniff now seem to nave a differing view of the value of those aircraft. The planes were purchased for $6 to $8 million each back in 1972 and had about eight years flying time left when sold to American for $8 million each. New 727’s sell for $10 to $12 million each. Our statement in the article that the aircraft were sold to American at half price was incorrect. No one, however, has disputed our point that a company that sells its capital holdings to meet operating expenses is in bad trouble. No one has disputed our report that Braniff lost $77 million in the first three quarters of 1980. “Bad Times at Braniff” is a story of which we are not regretful, but proud.



NEW FACES

OUR MAGAZINE has always been more than just a reflection of the personality of Dallas; it has also been a reflection of the personalities-and talents -of the people who write and edit D. The dimensions of our collective personality have grown recently with the addition to our staff of five new faces, a group of talented young writers and editors of which any publication would be justly proud.

Associate editor Beth El-lyn Rosenthal, 29, joins us from the Times Herald. Beth, who has lived in Dallas for three years, is a Chicago native who holds an undergraduate degree from Yale and a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia. In addition to being a tenacious reporter and a fine writer, Beth brings to us a specialty we consider vital in covering our growing city: She is an experienced and skillful business writer.

The newest name on our masthead is a familiar name to our readers. He is associate editor Steve Kenny, 24, a veteran reporter and feature writer whose by-line has been prominent in the Morning News. Steve, who grew up in Dallas and graduated from Hillcrest High School, is an honors graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he was managing editor of the campus newspaper. Steve has covered everything from politics to lifestyles in his newspaper career.

Another veteran writer who has joined us recently is associate editor Mike Shropshire, 38, formerly of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Fort Worth Press. Mike, a University of Texas graduate, is a natural writer whose talents as a pure wordsmith make him the envy of his peers.

Another new name on the masthead this month is that of Amy Cunningham, our new special sections editor. Amy, 25, a graduate of the University of Virginia, was a frequent freelance contributor to this magazine before joining us. She comes to us from the Dallas Observer, where she was a senior editor.

Rounding out the list ofnew names at D is copy editor Hancel Deaton, 24, whocame to us from the University of Texas, where she wasa staff member of The DailyTexan.