City News Roundup

Dallas Morning News hires more male writers and more Dallas news

Everyone knows that men have a more authoritative voice than women.

Photo courtesy of VishwaGujarat.com

This roundup of Dallas city news has two items related to transparency: one about online crime reports, the other about helicopter surveillance. There's good news for West Dallas residents but bad news if you like gender parity in your media.

Here's what happened in Dallas this week:

Online crime info
The Dallas Police Department is redacting certain information from its crime reporting online, which they say is to protect information on victims and preserve the integrity of investigations.

Other cities have taken similar steps. But this is not sitting well with city council member Cara Mendelsohn or the Dallas Morning News, who are both on a crusade.

Mendelsohn, who sniffed that this "might be for other cities ... but not for Dallas," thinks it should be up for discussion. The DMN doesn't like that it will make their jobs harder.

Some DMN staffers even found themselves working on the weekend to cover the topic, an occurrence so meaningful (and rare) that they put it in a pinned tweet.

Helicopter footage
An anonymous source leaked 600 hours of surveillance footage taken by police helicopters and drones, which included footage from police departments in Dallas and Atlanta.

The footage was posted on a site called DDoSecrets, whose cofounder said that the data was stored in an unsecured cloud and they didn't know the identity of the source.

According to Courthouse News, the video from Dallas' helicopter footage includes crimes in progress and surveillance linked to ongoing investigations, but also innocuous footage such as shots of crowds at the State Fair of Texas.

Concrete plant gets rejected
At its November 10 meeting, the Dallas City Council said no to a concrete batch plant trying to open in West Dallas.

Latino's Ready Mix had been in business at 1001 W. Commerce St. near Sylvan Avenue for years, but in 2019 it was told it had to move.

The formerly industrial neighborhood has more than a dozen concrete batch plants, but has become gentrified in recent years.

Latino's Ready Mix was handed a "denial with prejudice," which means they can't come back and make another request for two years.

Men rule, go men
The Dallas Morning News does not present well in a report on male dominance in the news media.

Called "Divided 2021: The Media Gender Gap," the report by the Women’s Media Center evaluated 30 news outlets in the U.S. including print, online, broadcast, cable TV, and wire, from January 1-March 31, 2021. Among those were 14 major daily newspapers, including the DMN.

Overall, across all media platforms, men get 65 percent of news bylines and credits, versus 34 percent for women. Print is worse. Online media (like CultureMap) is better:

Print: 69 percent men and 31 percent women
Online: 57 percent men, 43 percent women

At the Dallas Morning News, it's even worse, with 73 percent of the bylines going to men and 27 percent to women.

The only place where it's 50-50 is TV nightly news shows, because you need a pretty lady to look at. But in other media, where you can't see whether the female writer is attractive or not, everyone knows there's nothing more reassuring than the authoritative voice of a man, whereas women come off like nagging shrews.

politics city-news-roundup

better than last year

Texas struggles on new ranking of best states to live in 2026

Photo by Stuart Seeger Wikipedia

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After earning its worst-ever ranking last year, Texas has improved couple of spots on an evaluation of the best states to live, but it's still at the bottom of the pack.

Each year, WalletHub's analysts compare all 50 states using 51 livability metrics to measure their affordability, economy, education and health, quality of life, and safety. Factors that were weighed include the cost of living, homeownership rates, population and income growth rates, wealth gaps, public school system quality, road quality, crime rates, and many others.

The Lone Star State landed at No. 36 spot in 2026, making it the 15th worth state to live right now. That's on par with its 2024 ranking, and it's a two-spot improvement over its 2025 performance.

While Texas residents can brag about living in a state with the No. 1 highest number of restaurants per capita and the 7th best quality of life in the country, that's about it. Texas earned middling-to-poor scores among the four remaining livability rankings: safety (No. 33), affordability (No. 35), economy (No. 37), and education and health (No. 40).

Texas has a lot of work to do to improve its livability for all of its residents, but especially for women, according to several other 2026 WalletHub studies. Texas is the fourth-worst state for women, the ninth-worst state for working mothers, and the seventh-worst place to have a baby based on limited access to maternal and pediatric healthcare.

But the very worst states to live prove that life could be much worse. New Mexico ranks 50th overall, with Louisiana (No. 49), Mississippi (No. 48), Alaska (No. 47), and Arkansas (No. 46) rounding out the bottom of the list.

After holding on as the No. 1 best state to live for a few years in a row, Massachusetts now ranks No. 4 and was overtaken by Idaho (No. 1), New Jersey (No. 2), and Wisconsin (No. 3). New Hampshire rounds out the top five best states to live.

WalletHub's top 10 best states to live in 2026 are:

No. 1 – Idaho
No. 2 – New Jersey
No. 3 – Wisconsin
No. 4 – Massachusetts
No. 5 – New Hampshire
No. 6 – Wyoming
No. 7 – Utah
No. 8 – Minnesota
No. 9 – Pennsylvania
No. 10 – Florida

wallethub texas reports