This piece is part of Special Correspondent Steven Monacellis’ reporting on extremist groups masquerading as grassroots, social justice organizations.
For over 80 years, the Dallas Express operated as a weekly, Black-owned, progressive newspaper that covered racist lynchings, fought against segregation, and focused on the issues that mattered to the Black community in Dallas. Founded in 1892 and shuttered in the mid-1970s, the newspaper focused on issues ignored by the predominantly White press in a segregated city “that had been effectively run by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.”
Half a century after the paper went defunct, the Dallas Express was brought back to life under new management. In January 2021, D Magazine reported that the paper was “run by a Chicago-based operation called Metric Media News that owns hundreds of such dubious news sites all across the country.” Metric Media News, founded by conservative Chicago businessman Brian Timpone, is part of a broader network of right-wing websites that masquerade as nonpartisan, local news. One of those companies, Pipeline Media, also boasts Texas billionaire and Republican megadonor Tim Dunn as a board member. Researchers have dubbed such astroturf outlets that hide their true partisan purpose as “pink slime journalism.” Metric Media has also been linked to a series of “pink slime” newspapers that recently attacked Democratic candidates in the run-up to the Illinois Spring elections, according to NPR.
