The Dallas Morning News

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Dallas Morning News
Facade of Dallas Morning News office in Dallas.jpg

An example of a cover from The Dallas Morning News in 2010.
Top: The newspaper's offices in 2018.
Above: Front page of the April 24, 2010 issue
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)A. H. Belo Corporation
PublisherGrant Moise
EditorMike Wilson
FoundedOctober 1, 1885; 135 years ago (1885-10-01)
Headquarters1954 Commerce Street
Dallas, Texas 75201
United States
Circulation214,423 daily
288,059 Sunday
24,000 Digital[1]
ISSN1553-846X
Websitewww.dallasnews.com

The Dallas Morning News is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average of 271,900 daily subscribers. It was founded on October 1, 1885, by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the Galveston Daily News, of Galveston, Texas.[2] Historically, and to the present day, it is the most prominent newspaper in Dallas.[2]

Today it has one of the 20 largest paid circulations in the United States.[3] Throughout the 1990s and as recently as 2010, the paper has won nine Pulitzer Prizes for reporting and photography, George Polk Awards for education reporting and regional reporting, and an Overseas Press Club award for photography. The company has its headquarters in downtown Dallas.[4]

History[]

The Dallas Morning News main printing plant and distribution center in Plano, Texas.

The Dallas Morning News was founded in 1885 as a spin-off of the Galveston Daily News by Alfred Horatio Belo. In 1926, the Belo family sold a majority interest in the paper to its longtime publisher, George Dealey. By the 1920s, the Dallas Morning News had grown larger than the Galveston Daily News and become a progressive force in Dallas and Texas.[2] Adolph Ochs, who saved the New York Times from bankruptcy in 1896 and made the newspaper into one of the country's most respected, said in 1924 that he had been strongly influenced by the Dallas Morning News.[2]

During the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was a powerful force in Dallas, the Dallas Morning News pushed back against the KKK with its news coverage and editorials.[2] In turn, the KKK, which had a membership that included one in three eligible Dallas men, threatened to boycott the newspaper.[2]

In 1904, The Dallas Morning News began publishing the Texas Almanac, which had previously been published intermittently during the 1800s by the Galveston Daily News. After over a century of publishing by the Morning News, the Almanac's assets were gifted to the Texas State Historical Association in May 2008.[5]

Building previously used and occupied by The Dallas Morning News.

By the late 1940s, the Morning News had built and opened a new office, newsroom, and printing plant at Houston and Young Streets on the southwest side of downtown Dallas. A notable part of the facade above the front doors includes a quote etched in the stony exterior:

BUILD THE NEWS UPON
THE ROCK OF TRUTH
AND RIGHTEOUSNESS
CONDUCT IT ALWAYS
UPON THE LINES OF
FAIRNESS AND INTEGRITY
ACKNOWLEDGE THE RIGHT
OF THE PEOPLE TO GET
FROM THE NEWSPAPER
BOTH SIDES OF EVERY
IMPORTANT QUESTION
                         G. B. DEALEY

The complex at 508 Young Street would house all or part of the Morning News operations for the next six decades.

In late 1991, The Dallas Morning News became the lone major newspaper in the Dallas market when the Dallas Times Herald was closed after several years of circulation wars between the two papers, especially over the then-burgeoning classified advertising market. In July 1986, the Times Herald was purchased by William Dean Singleton, owner of MediaNews Group. After 18 months of efforts to turn the paper around, Singleton sold it to an associate. On December 8, 1991, Belo bought the Times Herald for $55 million, closing the paper the next day.

It was not the first time the Belo family had bought (and closed) a paper named The Herald in Dallas.

[In]...1879 Alfred H. Belo was investigating the possibility of establishing a sister paper in rapidly developing North Texas. When Belo's efforts to purchase the Herald [an extant paper in Dallas] failed, he sent George Bannerman Dealey to launch a new paper, the Morning News, which began publication on October 1, 1885. From the outset the Morning News enjoyed the double advantage of strong financial support and an accumulation of journalistic experience, and within a month and a half had absorbed its older rival.[6][7]

Al Día logo

In 2003, a Spanish-language newspaper was launched by The Dallas Morning News, called Al Día. Initially Al Día came with a purchase price, but in recent years the newspaper has been made available free of charge. It is published twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday.[8]

Between 2003 and 2011, a tabloid-sized publication called Quick was published by The Dallas Morning News, which initially focused on general news in a quick-read, digest form, but in later years covered mostly entertainment and lifestyle stories.

In late 2013, The Dallas Morning News ended its longtime newsgathering collaboration with previously-co-owned TV station WFAA. The newspaper entered into a new partnership with KXAS at that time.[9]

Newspaper vending machine with copies of The Dallas Morning News, in front of a restaurant in northeast Dallas, 2019.

Historically, the Morning News' opinion section has tilted conservative, mirroring Texas′ drift to the Republican Party since the 1950s.[10] However, on September 7, 2016 it endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, the first time it had recommended a Democrat for president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.[11] This came a day after it ran a scathing editorial declaring Republican candidate Donald Trump "not qualified to serve as president." It was the first time that the paper had refused to recommend a Republican since 1964.[12] Then, in wake of the approaching 2018 midterm elections, the Morning News once again endorsed a Democratic candidate: Beto O'Rourke, the challenger to incumbent Senator Ted Cruz.[13]

In late 2016 it was announced that The Dallas Morning News would move away from its home of 68 years on Young Street, to a building on Commerce Street previously used by the Dallas Public Library for its downtown branch. The Commerce Street address is one-third the size of the Young Street complex. Reasons given for the move included technology innovations, fewer staff, as well as printing presses no longer co-located with the newsroom and main offices (printing is done now mainly at a facility in Plano, north of Dallas).[14][15] By December 2017, the move was completed.[16] The former property at 508 Young was sold by October 2018 to a business partnership, which was looking into possible redevelopment opportunities for the complex,[17][18] but in December 2018 the partnership backed out of the deal.[19]

Changes were announced in January 2019 which included staff layoffs (including editorial, arts/culture, and business) and reducing the paper's Business section to one separate section per week, on Sunday; the remainder of the week, Business coverage would be found in the paper's Metro section. A total of 43 employees were affected by the move.[20][21]

In late February 2019, several printing agreements were not renewed at the Morning News suburban printing plant, and 92 positions were affected by the change there. Publications that had to find a different printing partner included Dallas Observer and Fort Worth Weekly.[22]

Awards[]

Awards won by The Dallas Morning News and its reporters

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ l"A.H. Belo Corp. 10K 2017". Belo.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "When Dallas Was the Most Racist City in America". D Magazine. Retrieved June 6, 2021.
  3. ^ "2012 Top Media Outlets 2013; Newspapers" (PDF). BurrellesLuce. March 13, 2012. Retrieved January 2, 2014.
  4. ^ "Contact Us Archived January 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine." The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved on November 21, 2009.
  5. ^ "About us", Texas Almanac (Texas State Historical Association). Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  6. ^ "BELO, ALFRED HORATIO". tshaonline.org.
  7. ^ "Dallas Morning News buys out rival paper", Texas Day by Day, 3 Dec 1885
  8. ^ "Sobre nosotros/About us", Aldiadallas.com. Retrieved 2018-12-09.
  9. ^ Sheryl Jean (December 19, 2013). "The Dallas Morning News and Channel 5 form partnership". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved December 10, 2018.
  10. ^ "After stormy but successful Democratic convention, it's Hillary's party now". The Dallas Morning News. July 29, 2016.
  11. ^ "We recommend Hillary Clinton for president". The Dallas Morning News. September 7, 2016.
  12. ^ "Donald Trump is no Republican". The Dallas Morning News. September 6, 2016.
  13. ^ "We recommend Beto O'Rourke for U.S. Senate". DallasNews.com. October 25, 2018. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
  14. ^ Jeffrey Weiss, "Dallas Morning News plans crosstown move to historic Statler Library redevelopment", The Dallas Morning News, October 6, 2016. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  15. ^ Karen Robinson-Jacobs, "Dallas Morning News parent signs lease for crosstown move to Statler", The Dallas Morning News, January 2, 2017. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  16. ^ Karen Robinson-Jacobs, "Moving into a new era", DallasNews.com, December 4, 2017. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  17. ^ Steve Brown, "Historic Dallas Morning News building selling to developers with track record of big deals", The Dallas Morning News, October 29, 2018. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  18. ^ Claire Ballor, "Former home of Dallas Morning News to sell for $33M", Dallas Business Journal, October 30, 2018. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  19. ^ Steve Brown, "Developer backs out on buying historic Dallas Morning News campus after Amazon HQ2 bypasses Dallas", The Dallas Morning News, December 10, 2018. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  20. ^ Shawn Shinneman, "DMN Announces 43 Layoffs, Nearly Half in Editorial", D Magazine, January 7, 2019. Retrieved 2019-01-07.
  21. ^ Chris Roush, "Dallas Morning News is cutting standalone biz news section", Talkingbiznews.com, January 7, 2019. Retrieved 2019-01-07.
  22. ^ Maria Halkias, "Dallas Morning News scales back commercial printing, cuts 92 jobs", The Dallas Morning News, February 28, 2019. Retrieved 2019-02-28.
  23. ^ "LIU Brooklyn". liu.edu.
  24. ^ "LIU Brooklyn". liu.edu.
  25. ^ "Opcofamerica.org". Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved August 19, 2006.
  26. ^ "The Dallas Morning News earns four first-place awards from the National Headliner Awards Competition", Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, April 24, 2017. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
  27. ^ "83rd National Headliner Awards winners", headlinerawards.org, April 2017. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
  28. ^ "List of 2005 Katie Award winners", Midland Reporter-Telegram (via Associated Press), November 4, 2005. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
  29. ^ "Press Club of Dallas announced Katie Award winners!", Press Club of Dallas, November 15, 2008. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
  30. ^ Sarah Sarder, "Dallas Morning News journalists honored by Press Club of Dallas", The Dallas Morning News, December 9, 2018. Retrieved 2019-01-15.

Further reading[]

External links[]

Retrieved from ""