Last week two ex-Beloists, Tracy Everbach and Craig Flournoy, wrote in journalism’s holy book, the Columbia Review of Journalism, that the Dallas Morning News had ceased to be near-great and had declined into a sort of genteel journalistic poverty.

Mostly their story rehashes the past ham-fisted purges of expensive but experienced and talented over-fifty Beloists and happily reports that most of the purgees are happier, if not wealthier than they had been at the Dallas News. At least the guy who now heads PR for an upscale topless bar is happier.

Yesterday, stung by the treason of two who were once their own, the Empire struck back. Publisher Jim Moroney and Editor Bob Mong fired off a memo to the papers 400 remaining news roomies accusing Everbach and Flournoy of shoddy journalism by failing to tell of all the great things the paper had achieved. The Two M’s list was exhaustive and exhausting. The sense is that they didn’t want to damage morale any more by leaving any of their newsroom action heroes out.

A shorter more discerning list would have served their purposes better (returning the comics page to its original design is not exactly a graphic triumph) but the fact is Moroney and Mong are right. The Dallas Morning News is providing some of the best local coverage ever. The Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Education Agency are upside down today because of superb Dallas News reporting. Democratic Sheriff Lupe Valdez and former GOP Judge Keith Dean have been given well-deserved bats upside the head. And some cheerleaders and Paris Hilton wannabees up in McKinney got nationally embarrassed for their antics.

But does it matter? Two recent stories illustrate the Belo dilemma. The first was an exhaustive and exhausting examination of the likely impact of a buyout of TXU by a private equity consortium. The study was nothing short of magnificent and it is hard to imagine anything of greater local general importance – after all everyone pays for electricity. But did anyone besides me and the TXU PR Department read it? I have mentioned it to dozens of people and all but one said it was too long to read.

The one was a consumer activist in Austin who thought the fact Belo didn’t run the story until after the legislative session was a result of conspiracy between Moroney and TXU Execs. Hogwash! But that just goes to show how distrusted the paper is and how what journalists like to do most, lengthy serious works, are dismissed in our society.

What I am hearing about, on elevators, at adjoining tables, in stores, is outrage among the faithful over Sunday’s mid-season Texas Ranger roundup. Up in Plano, where the News wants desperately to build readership and where mega-churches are thicker than Starbucks, there is outrage about sports writer Evan Grant’s use of a stained-glass religious motif to access the woeful Rangers. A picture of shortstop Michael Young walking on water was apparently not found to be amusing.

Even more outraged were baseball fans who found Grant’s King James verbiage bewildering. I think Grant is one hell of a baseball writer and I am a devoted reader but I couldn’t understand half of what he wrote.

So there you have it: the News gets no credit or readership for an A+ job on a subject that matters and brickbats for an ill-advised goofy gimmick on the sport’s page.

But maybe it really doesn’t matter. Newspapers are after all businesses which means they need money to operate. A more interesting study is that by Wachovia Bank’s Senior Analyst John Janedis released last week that showed newspaper advertising revenue down by 14% last year. We may all be bloggers soon.

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