The Dallas Morning News facts for kids
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Front page of the April 24, 2010 issue
The newspaper's offices in 2018
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | DallasNews Corporation |
| Founder(s) | Alfred Horatio Belo |
| Founded | October 1, 1885 |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | |
| Country | United States |
| Circulation | 69,694 print 63,000 digital-only (as of 2023) |
| Sister newspapers | Al Día |
| ISSN | 1553-846X |
| OCLC number | 1035116631 |
The Dallas Morning News is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average print circulation in 2022 of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885, by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the Galveston Daily News, of Galveston, Texas. Historically, and to the present day, it is the most prominent newspaper in Dallas.
Today it has one of the 20 largest paid circulations in the United States. 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. Its headquarters is in downtown Dallas.
Contents
History
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. 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.
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. In turn, the KKK, which had a membership that included one in three eligible Dallas men, threatened to boycott the newspaper.
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.
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:
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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
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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 Corporation 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.
In 2003, a Spanish-language newspaper called Al Día was launched by The Dallas Morning News. 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.
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.
Historically, the Morning News' opinion section has tilted conservative, mirroring Texas' drift to the Republican Party since the 1950s. 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. 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 the paper had refused to recommend a Republican since 1964. 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.
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 as the Dallas Public Library's downtown branch. The Commerce Street address is one-third the size of the Young Street complex. Reasons given for the move included technology innovations and 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). By December 2017, the move was completed. The former property at 508 Young was sold in October 2018 to a business partnership, which was looking into possible redevelopment opportunities for the complex, but in December 2018 the partnership backed out of the deal.
Changes were announced in January 2019 which included layoffs and reducing the paper's Business section to one separate section per week, on Sundays; the remainder of the week, Business coverage was placed in the paper's Metro section. A total of 43 employees were affected by the move.
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 the Dallas Observer and Fort Worth Weekly.
DallasNews Corporation, the paper's owner, announced on Sept. 13, 2023, it would offer buyouts eliminating up to 40 jobs, a 6% reduction in staff count. Buyouts would be offered starting Oct. 16. In May 2024, the company announced it will move its Plano printing operation, built in 1980, to a smaller facility in Carrollton. This would result in the elimination of 85 jobs, a 60% staff reduction. The changes are expected to save the company $5 million annually. A new printing press will be purchased for the new site and should be ready in 2025.
The "Bruh" Incident
On February 11, 2023, Mayor of Dallas Eric Johnson had posted on Twitter criticizing local news media for, in his view, having "no interest" in reporting on the second year of dropping crime rates in the city of Dallas, prompting responses from multiple local media outlets, including reporters from The Dallas Morning News. Notably, Meghan Mangrum, a then-reporter for The Dallas Morning News posted, "Bruh, national news is always going to chase the trend. Cultivate relationships with quality local news partnerships." Mangrum's tweet elicited criticism from Johnson, who claimed she was "letting [her] inherent biases show", and her black executive director, Katrice Hardy, asked if Mangrum would have used the term "bruh" when addressing a white mayor, to which Mangrum, who is white, affirmed with a yes. Mangrum argued that her use of "bruh" stemmed from her upbringing as a millennial hockey fan from Central Florida, and D Magazine reported that her Twitter feed showed her use of "bruh" in response to "all sorts of accounts".
Mangrum was fired from The Dallas Morning News three days after Johnson's reply for violating the paper's social media policy. This firing coincided with a Dallas NewsGuild-CWA protest, which Mangrum had helped organize. This culminated in the union filing a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board on Mangrum's behalf.
Awards
Pulitzer Prizes
- 1986: National Reporting
- 1989: Explanatory Journalism
- 1991: Feature Photography
- 1992: Investigative Reporting
- 1993: Spot News Photography
- 1994: International Reporting
- 2004: Breaking News Photography
- 2006: Breaking News Photography
- 2010: Editorial Writing
George Polk Awards
- 1990: Gayle Reaves, David Hanners, and David McLemore for regional reporting
- 1994: Olive Talley for education reporting
Overseas Press Club Awards
- 2001: Cheryl Diaz Meyer for photographic reporting from abroad
See also
- List of newspapers in Texas
- Fort Worth Star-Telegram
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