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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The Rival Returns
In 1970, while young Robert Decherd was writing sports stories for the Harvard Crimson, the outside world penetrated the complacent environment of Dallas journalism. The Times Mirror Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times and Long Island’s Newsday, two of the best newspapers in the country, bought the Times Herald. One year later Dallas voters rejected the Citizens Council’s candidate for mayor in favor of a former TV sportscaster named Wes Wise. Dallas was changing; events were overtaking the somnambulent Dealey dynasty, but the Morning News went on as before, as if its small lead in advertising and circulation was unassailable, allowing the Herald plenty of time to prepare its assault.
The siege began in 1973 when Times Mirror named Tom Johnson, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson, editor of the Herald. Only 32, articulate, and charming, Johnson was a new breed of editor for Dallas. He added staff, boosted salaries, and proclaimed his intention to make the Herald “the best newspaper in the Southwest.” Reporters revered him. When the News failed to follow suit, its demoralized newsroom staff began organizing a union.
In the middle of that crisis, Robert Decherd returned to Dallas. Even before he arrived, the beleaguered newsroom staff had thought of him as a messiah, a rival to the Dealey dynasty. The staff knew that his years at Harvard had given him a perspective different from that of the Dealeys’ News. During an era of heated antiwar feeling, Decherd had fit in well enough at the Crimson to be chosen by his left-leaning peers to head a very left-leaning campus paper. As a reporter there, he had blasted the Harvard administration for refusing to grant union employees time off to participate in a strike against the Viet Nam War. In Washington to cover the massive war protest in 1971, he had written that an outdoor detention center “had all the trappings of a concentration camp.” His final act as a collegian was to deliver the graduation speech for the class of 1973. Decherd urged his classmates “to probe America’s social and political order.” He concluded with an exhortation to shun “this modern-day laissez-faire society.” Then he set off for its capital—Dallas.
But there was another side to Robert Decherd at Harvard that offered better clues to the role he would play at the Dallas Morning News. People naturally deferred to him. “Robert was thirty when he was eighteen,” says a former colleague. Once elected Crimson president, he proved to be not nearly so radical as his colleagues had first perceived. Decherd, who acknowledges that he was gunning for the Crimson presidency from the start, had revealed a talent for adapting to any political environment.
The News staff didn’t really know Robert Decherd, but they knew all about his competitor for power within the family. Joe Dealey, Jr., had spent summers in the newsroom while attending Trinity University, and reporters had taken turns rewriting his stories. He started at Belo following his graduation in 1970 but left after only two months for a full-time enlistment in the Army National Guard. He found commanding a tank platoon more romantic than learning to run a newspaper. One weekend Joe wrote a long letter to his father, explaining that he had enjoyed his military experience and wanted to make the Army his career. Remember, Joe Dealey told his son, you have a duty to your family as well as to your country. In February 1972 Joe Junior returned to the News as the first enrollee in the paper’s three-year management training program, with the expectation that he would one day take over the company.
It was hard not to like Joe Junior. He was a sweet, prematurely balding fellow, gangling and endearing as a puppy. With a mixture of derision and affection, his fellow workers called him Scoop. Joe wore preppy jackets and bow ties to work, but he remained at heart a man in uniform. He stayed in the National Guard, and when he attended the formal functions that were required of a young man of his station, he wore his medals on his tuxedo.
Robert Decherd’s arrival a year later seemed certain to set up a replay of 1960; it was Dealey versus Decherd once again, with no prospect for a quick resolution. The tradition at Belo was that the generations moved up together. Joe Dealey and Jim Moroney would both reach retirement age while Joe Junior and Robert were in their thirties. Whoever won the fight for control of the Belo empire would rule for three decades.
But Joe Dealey, Jr., didn’t seem to realize that he would have to fight for his father’s office. He served his time in various departments of the company but did no more than he was told. When he completed the training program, he asked to become an editorial writer. He had no interest in the corporate world. It bored and bewildered him, as it had his father and grandfather. They had risen nonetheless because they were Dealeys. But now the Herald was at the gates, and dissolution of the G. B. Dealey trust was about to change the rules of family succession.
In contrast to Joe, Robert emerged as a key player in the company. The occasion was a pressmen’s strike in the spring of 1974, the newspaper’s first labor dispute in more than forty years. Decherd volunteered to help Belo defeat the union. He worked eighteen hours a day scheduling press crews, arranging for security, manning the phones, running messages. The News published without interruption; six weeks later, the pressmen begged for their jobs back, but the News had already replaced them. Belo had rid itself of its most troublesome labor union, and Robert Decherd, nine months into his training, had displayed a talent for management.
Joe Junior had spent the entire strike helping out in the pressroom, working beside janitors and advertising salesmen. He remained there long after the crisis was over because he preferred running a press to being groomed for the executive suite. But when his father insisted that he return to his management training, Joe heeded the call and left the News‘ basement.
While Joe Junior resisted his legacy, Robert Decherd embraced his. Already he had developed the ambition of his father —and more. At the age of 22 Decherd realized that he no longer wanted to run a newspaper; he wanted to run the Belo Corporation. And he wanted Belo to be not just a newspaper company but a national media giant.
Decherd began making the right moves in Dallas, just as he had at Harvard. First he made it clear that he was there to stay. He bought a townhouse. He married well, to a charming, attractive woman named Maureen Healy. And he started doing what Fine Young Men in Dallas do: working for the Salvation Army, the United Way, St. Mark’s, the Dallas Symphony, and half a dozen other organizations. Even before he received his inheritance from the G. B. Dealey trust, Decherd began buying Belo stock and started building a team of people who were loyal to him. Finally, he made the most important move of all. In his second year at the company, he asked for a seat on the Belo Corporation’s board of directors.
Joe Senior was surprised by the request, and he did not like it. He, Ben Decherd, and Jim Moroney, Jr., had all become directors of the company on the same day. Giving Robert Decherd a seat would promote him ahead of Joe’s own son. Why should young Decherd sit on the board and not Joe Junior?
Decherd made a blunt argument. The Dealeys already had a board seat; the Decherds had a right to one as well. Except for Joe Senior, Decherd was about to become Belo’s largest stockholder. When Jim Moroney sided with the Decherds, Joe yielded. Two crucial precedents were set: when push came to shove, Joe would not fight for Joe Junior, and Jim Moroney would fight for Robert. In March 1976 Robert Decherd, 24 years old, assumed his place on the board.
The Inner Circle
Before Robert Decherd’s first board meeting, Joe Senior took him aside for a talk. “You’re young,” Dealey told him. “Just like Jimmy and I did, you ought to listen to the older and wiser heads on the board. Speak when spoken to.” A few minutes later Decherd jumped into a board discussion. To most of Belo’s directors, his remarks sounded thoughtful and modest. But to Dealey they sounded like a direct challenge—”Frankly, I was a little enraged about it. I felt like, ‘He’s trying to call my hand here, but I’m not going to react.’”
In not reacting, Joe was true to form. His method, whether he was running his company or protecting his throne, was to drag his feet rather than stand and fight. The immediate issue was nothing less than the future of the company—whether Belo would stay private and small or go public and reach for greatness. But unlike Robert, Joe had no interest in the big time. Going public would create enormous wealth, but it would also open the door to outsiders. Joe didn’t like the idea that people would know his salary, and he didn’t want nosy shareholders looking over his shoulder. He blocked broadcasting acquisitions and botched a golden opportunity to build a regional publishing empire by failing to purchase papers in Waco, Austin, Lufkin, and Port Arthur.
But time was on Robert’s side; the last of G. B. Dealey’s children had died five years earlier, and the sands were running out on the Dealey trust. On the evening that it was to expire, Decherd was in Grand Prairie, skidding around curves on a grimy track in a go-cart. At midnight he inherited $10 million worth of Belo stock. Twelve other descendants of G. B. Dealey also came into large blocks. Most didn’t work at the company, and many wanted to sell their shares. But as long as Belo was a private corporation, they could not get what their stock was worth. Still, most of the clan was willing to leave the decision up to the relatives running the company, but not Gordon Jackson.
The sins of the father were about to be visited on the children. Just as Ted Dealey had wronged Ben Decherd, so G. B. Dealey had wronged the Jacksons. G.B. had exiled his daughter Annie and her children, including Gordon, from the family business. Now they would set in motion the events that would send the Dealeys into exile.
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