The Dallas Morning News

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The Dallas Morning News logo
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner A. H. Belo Corporation
Publisher James M. Moroney III
Editor Robert W. Mong, Jr.
Founded 1885
Headquarters 508 Young Street
Dallas, Texas 75202
 United States
Circulation 368,313 Daily
520,215 Sunday[1]
Website DallasNews.com

The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas (USA) area, with a circulation of around a half-million 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][3][4] Today it has one of the 20 largest paid circulations in the United States. Throughout the 1990s and as recently as 2005, the DMN has won numerous Pulitzers for both reporting and photography, George Polk Awards for education reporting and regional reporting, and an Overseas Press Club award for photography.

The paper also publishes Quick, a free weekly with abbreviated news primarily catering to 20- to 30-year-olds, created partly in response to lagging circulation and readership numbers, as it hoped to increase overall readership by converting Quick readers into Morning News readers.

A. H. Belo Corporation owns the papers, both of which are headquartered in downtown Dallas.

Contents

[edit] Dominant Dallas newspaper

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

The fact that Singleton had begun his newspaper career at the Morning News in the 1970s fueled speculation DMN had been behind the entire sale and closure of their rival paper. While the News obviously stood to benefit, no evidence was ever proffered of behavior outside the bounds of the admittedly rough newspaper trade.

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.[5] [6]

[edit] Circulation controversy

The Dallas Morning News has been accused of inflating its circulation numbers to keep advertiser revenue high. In the mid-1980s, the paper was sued by the rival Times Herald, charging that the News was overstating circulation increases. In 2004, long after the Times Herald had ceased printing, The Dallas Morning News admitted it had indeed underreported circulation decreases, and had overstated Sunday circulation by 11.9% and daily circulation by 5.1%. The Morning News promised to pay advertisers US$23 million in restitution. The circulation problems worsened parent company Belo's financial condition. In late 2004, Belo Corporation laid off 250 workers, including 150 at the Morning News. Two years later, The News offered a voluntary severance package which was taken by more than 100 staffers.

[edit] Awards

[edit] Pulitzer Prizes

[edit] George Polk Awards

  • 1990 -- Gayle Reaves, David Hanners, and David McLemore for regional reporting
  • 1994 -- Olive Talley for education reporting

[edit] Overseas Press Club Awards

  • 2001 -- Cheryl Diaz Meyer for photographic reporting from abroad

[edit] Editorial staff

  • James M. Moroney III; Publisher and Chief Executive Officer
  • Robert W. Mong, Jr.; Editor
  • George Rodrigue; Vice President, Managing Editor
  • Keven Ann Willey; Vice President, Editorial Page Editor

[edit] NeighborsGo

In April 2005, The Dallas Morning News launched four editions of a weekly newspaper called "Neighbors." The response to this reader-generated newspaper was positive enough that, by the end of 2006, 12 more "Neighbors" were being published. The publication was rebranded as neighborsgo. As of April 10, 2009, neighborsgo publishes 18 weekly print editions with a combined circulation of more than 250,000 copies. More than 15,500 area residents are members of the neighborsgo Web site where users can upload news content that editors "reverse publish" into the weekly print edition.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.burrellesluce.com/top100/2008_Top_100List.pdf
  2. ^ Galveston Daily News: Daily News Firsts
  3. ^ Handbook of Texas: Galveston News
  4. ^ Galveston Daily News: History of the Daily News
  5. ^ Alfred H. Belo, Texas Handbook On-Line
  6. ^ "Dallas Morning News buys out rival paper", Texas Day by Day, 3 Dec 1885

[edit] External links

v • d • e
A. H. Belo
The Dallas Morning News  • Denton Record-Chronicle  • The Press-Enterprise  • The Providence Journal  • Al Día  • Quick  • The Business Press  • The Difference Desert Daily  • La Prensa en Linea
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dallas_Morning_News"
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