The Legacy of Citizen Robert
At 21 Robert Decherd set out to capture the prize that had eluded his father: the throne of Texas’ most powerful media dynasty. At 34 he has won control of the Dallas Morning News and much, much more—but to what end?
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“But the most critical difference between father and son was reflected on the editorial page. Gone was the sense of moderation. The editorials began to take on Ted’s personality—strident and shrill, outspoken and mean. Ted Dealey was a red-baiter, a supporter of Joe McCarthy, an unforgiving opponent of the United Nations, an enemy of social welfare and unions and federal aid, and so was his newspaper. In the News‘ editorial columns, the Supreme Court was a “judicial Kremlin.” Liberals were fools, dupes, or fellow travelers. U.S. recognition of Russia, an action that G. B. Dealey had applauded, was a “Queer Deal.” Ted Dealey’s News never strayed far from its free-enterprise gospel, not even when it was speaking to the high rate of traffic deaths in Texas. The accidents, it observed, resulted from “the same human qualities that made America great—willingness to risk, driving energy, rugged individualism.”
Just as G. B. Dealey’s editorial page had changed the Dallas of an earlier era, Ted Dealey’s shaped his. The public life of the city turned ugly in the fifties and sixties. The art museum took down a Picasso after a barrage of calls protested that the artist was a communist. When the museum board resisted attempts to close a photography exhibit that included Russian photographers, the News headlined its story MUSEUM SAYS REDS CAN STAY. Police pressure forced all local bookstores to take Tropic of Cancer off their shelves. In 1960 Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were spat on during a campaign visit to the Adolphus Hotel. Four days later John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States, an event that led to Ted Dealey’s most notorious public acts.
In October 1961 Ted joined a group of nineteen Texas publishers for a Friday lunch at the White House. It was a typical presidential courting ritual: an elegant bite to eat, an off-the-record briefing, and a bit of pleasant conversation, all harmless enough. But this time was to be different.
After lunch Kennedy spoke to the publishers about foreign affairs and then asked if any of his guests had anything to say. One publisher got up and delivered the best wishes of his local citizenry. Then Ted Dealey rose, pulling out a prepared statement. Since Kennedy’s election, the News‘ editorial page had leveled an unrelenting attack on the president: he was a buffoon, a thief, thirty times a fool. Now, face to face, Dealey continued the assault. “The general opinion of the grassroots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters,” Dealey read to the president. “If we stand firm, there will be no war. The Russians will back down. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline’s tricycle.”
The other publishers were aghast. “Mr. President,” said Jim Chambers, publisher of the Times Herald (Dallas’ afternoon paper) and a man who knew Ted Dealey well, “I think you should know that Mr. Dealey does not express the sentiments of all the publishers around this table.” The incident produced a national media fire storm, and the News relished every moment. Around the state and the country, Ted Dealey was condemned as a reactionary and a boor. But in Dallas, the News received more than 2,000 letters, and 1700 of them voiced approval of his actions. In Dallas it was Jim Chambers who fielded the stacks of hate mail.
Two years later a News advertising salesman took the copy for an unusual ad up to the executive suite. He was worried about the ad’s strong language and uncertain origin. Normally such questions would have been routed through Joe Dealey, Ted’s son, but Joe was away at a newspaper convention and wouldn’t be back until President Kennedy’s visit the next day. Instead, the decision was left to Ted.
Even today Joe Dealey shakes his head at the memory of the ad. “Damn, we ought not to have done it,” he says. “If I’d been sitting there, I’d have killed it.” But Ted was sitting there, and so, on November 22, 1963, John Kennedy was greeted with the ad that would forever link the Dallas Morning News with the tragic events of that day. “Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas,” it began, and it went on to ask a series of rhetorical questions, such as “Why have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the Spirit of Moscow?” The entire ad was enclosed in a thick black border. That morning Kennedy read the ad and handed it to his wife. “Oh, you know, we’re heading into nut country,” he said. Three hours later he was struck dead by an assassin’s bullet—as his limousine passed through a plaza named for G. B. Dealey.
The Dealey Dynasty
The News‘ downhill slide did not stop with the editorial page. Ted Dealey’s lack of vision afflicted the entire paper. Early in the fifties Felix McKnight, managing editor of the News, proposed to Dealey that the paper hire a talented sportswriter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram named Blackie Sherrod. Ted Dealey said no.
“No” was a word heard frequently in the paper’s newsroom. Bureaus were shut down. Staffing increases were denied. Raises were refused. One editor recalls trying to hire a reporter from Abilene, who responded that he could make more money staying where he was. The low salaries inspired a couplet that circulated in the newsroom: “Be-lo, Be-lo, Be-lo par,/ That: is what our paychecks are.”
The stinginess wasn’t due to poverty. With Dallas growing and the company’s new local TV station (WFAA) producing profits, Belo was making more money than ever. It was a matter of attitude. Like many who inherit wealth and power, Ted was content to maintain what he had, and there was nothing to stir him from complacency. Since 1942 Dallas had had only two newspapers. The News had a monopoly in the morning, the Times Herald had the afternoon, and they happily divided the pie. The News led in total circulation—it prided itself on being the only daily sold in every county in Texas—and in several advertising categories, particularly classifieds. The Herald sold more copies in Dallas County and carried more retail advertising. Both papers made money, and the hierarchies of the two institutions maintained cordial relations.
The papers competed for news, but the competition was gentlemanly and limited. The restraints applied to competition for talent as well. For years the papers adhered to unwritten rules against raiding one another’s staff. The quiet conspiracy avoided bidding wars that might escalate newsroom salaries. The rules dictated that a reporter or editor had to quit one paper before the other would consider hiring him. In 1957 Felix McKnight became the solitary exception. McKnight had been at the News for sixteen years, most of the time as managing editor. But he knew he could rise no higher. Belo’s top echelon was restricted to family and longtime close associates. Even company stock was closely held. Though McKnight ran the paper’s news operation, he was not allowed to buy a share. So when the Herald offered him the job of editor, with stock options and a position on the board. McKnight jumped ship. At the Times Herald, McKnight promptly hired Blackie Sherrod.
Part of the problem was that Ted Dealey made no effort to manage the details of his business. Until 1956 the company had no annual budgets. To Ted, the News‘ profit-and-loss statements were a mystery. “I used to go in there and give him the monthly financial report,” says Bill Smellage, an accountant brought in as chief financial officer in 1954. “Ted never was interested in the details. ‘Bill,’ he asked, ‘was the took-ins more than the took-outs?’ That’s all he wanted to know.”
The board of directors did nothing to compensate for the problem. Its meetings were as formal and informative as a family reunion, and for good reason: it was made up entirely of family members and a few intimate associates who had worked at Belo for decades. Belo had never had a true outside director. G. B. Dealey’s widow, Olivia, served as board chairman until her death in 1960 at age 97.
At board meetings directors received no written materials. Jim Moroney. Jr., one of G. B. Dealey’s grandsons, remembers his father’s giving financial reports that lasted less than a minute: “Second quarter was a pretty good quarter … did a little better man last year. Had a problem with newsprint … pretty good Quarter.” Says Jim Junior, now 63, “You were lucky if you knew what the profit was when the meeting was over.”
The Dallas Morning News was one of those rare institutions in which time seemed to alter nothing. But it was the unbroken pattern of family management that was particularly distinctive—management that drew not just on one line of G. B. Dealey’s heirs but four. In addition to his two sons, G.B. had three daughters: Maidie Moroney, Fannie Decherd, and Annie Jackson. The Jacksons were the only branch of the Dealey family that was never represented at the News. The reason was not lack of interest: more than one Jackson son inquired about the possibility of a newspaper career. But the answer was always no. A family member says the banishment resulted from G.B.’s conflicts with his daughter. It seems Annie was a nervous, talkative woman who drove old George Dealey to distraction, and he refused to countenance her frequent presence. “His reasoning was that if we allow any of the Jackson boys to work for the News, Annie would be down here every day telling us how to run everything,” says the family member.
To keep Annie out of the picture, the family member says. G.B. tried to have her committed to a mental institution, asking grandson Ben Decherd to arrange it. In time the breach between the Jacksons and the rest of the family would produce enormous headaches for the Belo Corporation, and provide the wedge that Robert Decherd needed to take control.
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