Last week, we tried something new. We did a photo issue — The Swimsuit Edition.
It was fun. It was summery. We hoped to attract some new readers. We certainly did attract some new advertisers, and we brought back some advertisers who hadn’t been in the paper in awhile. Welcome back!
And we expected criticism. Some of the comments we got were constructive.
If we do a swimsuit edition next year, we should leave a few pages in the front for news, rather than just putting the news online. Agreed.
If we do a swimsuit issue again next year, we should have more than just captions. It should include several related fashion articles. Again, great idea.
More women next year. We’re cool with that suggestion. Trans inclusion. We did. We just didn’t label our trans model.
Then there were the comments that made me question what I have devoted my life to doing, which is making our community better.
Like those from a Facebook thread from Laura McFerrin Hogan: “Has anyone read the Dallas Voice lately? It’s terrible. This week is a swimsuit addition [sic] and it’s just a bunch of people in swimsuits. Where’s the hard hitting news? There are so many issues they could be writing about. The Voice is turning into an embarrassment.”
Laura, I love that you’re so passionate about Dallas Voice. We are, too. That’s why we’re always trying new things, and we want all of them to work. Like our new cover format. Like some of our new writers. Like some of our new features. Some won’t work. This one didn’t for you and for some of our other readers.
Even if you consider last week’s issue an entire failure, please understand that attracting new advertisers keeps us in business so we can continue to cover the community.
One of my favorite comments was from Kandy Pople-Gill.
“Its [sic] been years since we picked one up. Last time it was full of Who was seen at which bar… pictures. .. Who cared?”
Scene, as we’ve called those pages for about the last 10 years, isn’t more than three pages and never has been. And it’s buried in the back.
You really have to look for it. Interesting that you’ve missed the news in the front. I’m sure somehow you’ll find your name, also somewhat buried here on Page 28, especially when you don’t pick the paper up.
Further down the thread, Ashlee McClelland commented, “Seriously when have you looked to DV for ‘hard hitting news?’ When has ANYWHERE had hard hitting news? It isn’t a concept that means anything in modern journalism.”
Ashlee, our goal is to cover the LGBT community in North Texas, and when we can, throughout Texas.
I’m not sure what hard-hitting stories you’re looking for that you’re not finding here or anywhere else. However, I can think of a few that have made a difference in the lives of LGBT people in the area.
When AIDS Arms former Executive Director Raeline Nobles needed to get a client into Parkland, she found waiting times were getting longer and longer. Despite requirements that agencies that receive Ryan White funding do patient intake within two weeks, waiting time had extended to three months.
Frustrated, she called me. I worked on the story for two weeks and after it ran on Friday, waiting times were fixed by Monday. Parkland was furious with Dallas Voice, but they fixed the problem as a result of my story.
I did a story about two gay Iraqi refugees who were not receiving government-contracted services from Catholic Charities and were being harassed by others in the housing they were given. I received a call from a United Nations mission offering their help and received calls offering them jobs and other assistance. We hooked them up, and their lives became better. Hard-hitting? Maybe not, but I hope Dallas Voice helped in some way by making the lives of a couple of people in our community better.
After the raid on the Rainbow Lounge, we were so busy that week taking calls from national news organizations from CNN to the New York
Times that we were very late finishing the next week’s issue. So even when members of our community feel let down by our content, other press outlets seem to respect us. So do most of the people we cover. Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead later said we were the only ones who got the story right from the beginning and reported it fairly.
And I admit it. I go for the non-hard-hitting as well. A couple I profiled got a call from Oprah a few weeks after my story ran. Her producers interviewed them and they ended up on Gayle King. So while we may not always be meeting the needs of everyone in our community, I take some solace in knowing at least Oprah finds us interesting enough to read.
David Taffet is a staff writer at Dallas Voice. He can be reached at taffet@dallasvoice.com
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 30, 2014.