Little Boxes

Since December, the city's been contemplating an ordinance that would "ban distribution boxes not conforming to rigid standards for size, color and material." Looks like it's about to happen -- thank God too, because newspaper boxes are all that stands between a shithole and a class act. But you know who doesn't seem terribly impressed by the city's efforts to ban control newspaper racks in certain parts of the city -- chiefly, in and around downtown and Uptown? Editor & Publisher, that's who.

While the journo-biz mag doesn't come right out and say it sounds like a crap idea -- and it is, since the only way into the new proposed standardized boxes is to get into a lottery that favors dailies and "prominent downtown publications," whatever that means -- it does mention one thing The Dallas Morning News leaves out of its story. One of those folks at City Hall fully behind the city's pay-to-play scheme is Mayor Laura Miller -- "a former Dallas Observer columnist," adds E&P. We can read between the lines. --Robert Wilonsky