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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Gordon Jackson owned 112,250 shares of Belo stock. That was only 4 per cent, but it was enough to make him a nuisance to his cousins who ran the company. He constantly pressed them to go public. He demanded access to the books. Then Jackson became more than a nuisance. He discovered a federal rule that made any company with more than five hundred stockholders on the last day of the year subject to public reporting requirements. Jackson was plotting to take Belo public against its will.
In July 1978 Jackson took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal announcing a public offering of his Belo stock. Selling no more than three shares at a time, Jackson raised the number of shareholders from 144 to more than 600. He published his own prospectus, revealing secret details such as executive compensation ($231,204 for Joe Dealey in 1977) and stock ownership (Dealeys, Decherds, and Moroneys owned more than half the company).
For once Belo’s directors were unanimous. Whether they favored going public or not, they agreed that they shouldn’t do it on someone else’s terms. They had to deal. But how? Jackson didn’t get along with Joe Dealey or Jim Moroney, but he had always gotten along with Ben Decherd. So Dealey turned to Ben’s son. Just as in the pressroom strike, Robert was at center stage, and this time, rather than volunteering, he had been asked. He carried Belo’s offer to Jackson; Dealey, Moroney, and Decherd would buy him out for $44 a share, around $5 million. Jackson accepted.
But the battle wasn’t over. Belo still had to get the number of shareholders below five hundred. The company’s strategy was to carry out reverse stock splits, forcing small shareholders to sell their fractions back to the company. Ahead lay angry questions from outside shareholders, more questions from the press-exactly what Joe had always dreaded. Once again, he turned to Robert. Decherd left his job as assistant to the News‘ executive editor and set up camp in the fourth-floor executive suite. He became Belo’s expert on the reverse splits and did most of the talking in the shareholders’ meetings. When the crisis had passed and the number of shareholders was safely below five hundred, Decherd did not return to the newsroom. He stayed on the fourth floor with a new title (vice president for administration), a new assignment (to study taking Belo public), and a new status. Along with Joe Dealey and Jim Moroney, 27-year-old Robert Decherd became a member of Belo’s inner circle.
The Jackson crisis had helped to draw the lines within that circle. One day in October 1978 Joe Dealey asked Jim Moroney and Robert Decherd to come over to his palatial home in Highland Park. Dealey was a rich man, yet he was uncomfortable with the million-dollar debt he had incurred to help buy out the Jacksons. Joe told his cousins he wanted to unload his share of Jackson’s stock. He thought he had a buyer. Did they want to sell too? Decherd and Moroney were astonished. The two spoke privately. They could not let Joe sell to outsiders; they must buy his stock themselves. This was a matter of control; it would prove that they believed in Belo, even if Joe did not. It was a watershed moment. Joe Dealey surrendered more than 38,000 shares to the only two men who could challenge the extension of the Dealey dynasty.
Moroney, at 57 the head of Belo’s broadcast division, became a key Decherd ally. He was tired of his years in the shadow of the Dealeys and frustrated by Joe’s refusal to let him buy more television stations. Yet Moroney had never thought to challenge Joe; he was too much the follower to lead an insurrection. Decherd in turn had always had a deep affection for Moroney. Now he began to solicit Moroney’s advice, and a new decision-making pattern evolved in the management of the Belo Corporation. When a problem developed, Decherd would do the legwork to figure out how to solve it. He and Moroney would confer to decide what to do. Then the two of them would meet with Joe Dealey to gain a formal blessing of their plans.
The Newspaper War
The Dallas newspaper war heated up on Saturday, September 6, 1975, when the presses at the Dallas Times Herald rolled twelve hours earlier than usual. It was a daring step. Except on Sundays, the News had enjoyed a morning monopoly since 1885. Now the Herald was challenging the News on its home turf—successfully, too. The Saturday edition soon grew from 24 to 90 pages.
Under Times Mirror, Tom Johnson and Jim Chambers transformed the Herald. They redesigned the paper, started new sections, and cleared ads off the inside section fronts. Its reporting became more aggressive, its writing bright and sharp. In 1976 Time named the Herald one of the top five papers in the South. The strategy was working; the Herald was cutting into the News‘ advertising lead. For the first time, it nosed ahead of the News in Sunday circulation.
In a rapidly changing city the News seemed stodgy and old-fashioned. Long after the Citizens Council had lost its clout, the News trumpeted its slate of candidates on page one. The Herald seemed to speak for the city Dallas was becoming, the News for the city it had been. In September 1977 the Herald did what the News had feared; it began putting out a morning edition seven days a week.
The News‘ response was: nothing. Its design had not changed for thirty years. Its writing was dull. The newsroom union had collapsed following Belo’s quick disposal of the pressmen, but the complaints that prompted it—low pay in particular—remained.
In the executive suite Decherd became the company’s expert on the News. Even Joe Dealey was worried about the Herald by that time. The News had to do something. But what? Decherd seized on two solutions; both were vast departures from traditional News policies. One was to hire Yankelovich, Skelly and White, the New York market research firm that had helped remake the New York Times, to provide a road map for the News‘ future. The second was to tell Joe Dealey that he wanted to look outside the company for an editor.
The paper had not gone outside its own ranks for an executive editor since 1929, and even then G. B. Dealey had appointed his brother, a retired college professor. The current editor, Tom Simmons, who had worked for the News since 1931, was due to retire in 1980. Terry Walsh, the 58-year-old managing editor who had worked at the paper for 34 years, was waiting in the wings. But Decherd thought Walsh lacked the aggressiveness and savy for the job. Ever loyal to the past, Dealey insisted that Walsh be considered against any outside choice, but he agreed to the search.
In January 1980 Decherd began a personal, eight-month quest for a new editor. He wanted a promoter as well as a journalist, someone who could make the News a very good paper but, just as important, someone who could make it very successful. Decherd had no interest in a crusading zealot; Dallas was not Harvard. He cared deeply about tone; he believed in journalistic restraint and wanted an editor who shared that obsession. He also needed a choice who would satisfy Joe Dealey.
By early fall Decherd had winnowed his list to five candidates: David Jones of the New York Times; Gene Foreman of the Philadelphia Inquirer; Ron Martin of the Baltimore News American; Stuart Loory, a former editor of the Chicago Sun-Times; and Burl Osborne, managing editor of the Associated Press. When Jones dropped out, Decherd had three proven newspaper editors to choose from, but he was drawn to the one candidate who had never run a paper. A political moderate raised as a Baptist in Kentucky, Burl Osbome had worked at the AP for twenty years. His wire service had to satisfy thousands of newspapers of vastly different tastes; to do so, he had learned to prune out overwriting and flamboyance. Moreover, Osborne, at 43, was a businessman. His job involved dealing with clients as much as with copy; he knew that the news had to be marketed.
Late one afternoon in October 1980, Robert Decherd returned to the newsroom to introduce his choice. He looked pleased but worn. This was the most important decision he had made in his life; Decherd’s ambitions were riding on it. The reporters were eager too. They had heard rumors of big names from great newspapers. “The new editor would like to come out and meet you,” Decherd announced. “His name is Burl Osborne.” Decherd proceeded to lead a short, pudgy man around to each desk in the newsroom. After Decherd and his choice departed, the disappointed reporters gathered in clusters to ask the question. Who’s Burl Osbome? One headed for a copy of Who’s Who in America to find out more about the AP lifer who was going to run their newspaper.
Osborne started work that same month, which allowed Decherd to fade into the background. Within a month, the Business Tuesday section was launched, and a flurry of other changes followed. The News hired Baltimore Sun reporter Carl Leubsdorfto head its Washington bureau; it adopted a clean new design; it opened bureaus in New York, Tel Aviv, and Toronto; it raised salaries and expanded the news staff.
The News‘ circulation and advertising slide had bottomed out in 1978. The paper regained the Sunday circulation lead and began pulling farther ahead on weekdays. Its advertising advantages grew. The Herald‘s reporters could still take solace in the knowledge that they worked for the better paper, but those days were numbered.
Under Osborne the News steadily improved, becoming an excellent paper by regional, if not national, standards. Its business section regularly embarrassed the Herald, and its sports section became one of the best in the country. The News began building reporting talent and started to do serious investigative reporting.
In the meantime Times Mirror contributed to the Herald‘s decline by promoting Tom Johnson up the ladder and out of Dallas. His successors lacked the magic and made foolish decisions to boot, dropping the popular Parade magazine, losing Ann Landers’ column, and alienating Blackie Sherrod. All three ended up with the News. Reporters began to complain of mistreatment. Suddenly it was the Herald newsroom where morale was low and the News that was making all the smart moves.
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