Another story in the news this week may tell us something we need to know. The Komen Foundation, truly a product of this city even if CEO Nancy Brinker now lives in many elsewheres, apparently is grinding down into some sort of final demise brought about by what may be this city's real ultimate challenge -- the echo chamber. The Washington Post reported yesterday that Komen is canceling a third of its big fund-raising races for lack of interest, still bleeding from self-inflicted wounds incurred last year when Brinker, the foundation's founder, tried to suck up to Republican right-wingers by cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood.

Remember how Brinker said she had learned her lesson so bad that she was going to resign? Well, it turns out that everybody else at Komen did resign, but Brinker stayed on and gave herself a pay raise. She said recently she was "humbled and excited" to be named by Reader's Digest as one of American's most trusted citizens, an announcement greeted in some quarters by the inevitable question, "What is Reader's Digest?"

When Komen hit the wall over Brinker's right-wing suck-up play, public relations experts were calling it "the New Coke of nonprofits," a reference to one of the more famous marketing miscalculations in recent American history. I always thought Brinker's huge goof-up was the product of the Dallas echo-chamber effect.

Here's my point. Any leadership that was even minimally in touch with political culture in the big wide rest of America would have said, "Wow, cut off Planned Parenthood? Doesn't Planned Parenthood have an awfully strong brand going way back with most people in the nation? Shouldn't we test that first?"

But in recent days, the controversy flared anew amid reports that Brinker got a salary boost and is still listed as CEO on the foundation Web site.

Last year, we reported that Brinker drew a $417,000 salary from the foundation in 2010, along with billing it for first-class air travel. That enflamed Komen critics – who were already calling for her resignation – and was part of the reason that participation in Komen-sponsored “Walk for the Cure’’ fundraisers fell off after the brouhaha.

On Friday, we learned that Komen’s most recent IRS filings she made $684,717 in fiscal 2012, a 64 percent jump from April 2010 to March 2011, according to The Dallas Morning News.