Texas Monthly Reporter
(Page 2 of 4)
DAILY DOUBLE IN DALLAS
In his excellent book of essays, In A Narrow Grave, Larry McMurtry describes Dallas as "self-righteous, conservative, the city of the instant put-down." He goes on to add, "nowhere else in the state does one find so many bitter, defensive, basically insecure people in positions of power."
Later, McMurtry described the two Dallas newspapers as, "languid and establishmentarian." Both statements were defensible in 1968 when his book was published, but the winds of change are blowing strong through Texas' second largest city.
Tom Johnson, 32, came to town last August 1 to take over as executive editor of the city's perennial step-child newspaper, The Dallas Times Herald, and the newspaper business hasn't been the same since. Johnson, a poor Georgia boy, worked harder than the rest to be first. He earned a bachelor of journalism from the University of Georgia, a master's in business from Harvard (during which he co-authored a book on automated newspaper techniques), and in 1966 became the youngest special assistant ever to serve the President of the United States.
Johnson returned to Austin with the late President in 1969 and served as vice president of the family's business interests in Texas until L.B.J.'s death last January.
While working for the President, Johnson was approached by executives of both Dallas dailies about a job. Joe Dealey and Joe Lubbin of the News offered him a very lucrative position. The late Albert Jackson and publisher Jim Chambers did likewise at the Herald. Johnson went with the Herald.
Since then, word around the posh, private clubs on top of the bank towers and in the hotels is that the new editor was "out to get the Dallas establishment to build up the Herald's sagging reputation," as a wealthy realtor recently told me.
"Not true at all," says Johnson. "I want to make this paper not only the best in the city but the best in the Southwest. In reporting, for instance, that means no sacred cows. No one in this city gets special treatment."
Many of Johnson's changes so far involve nothing more than common sense, a trait much admired by his previous boss. He moved his office from the executive first floor to the newsroom's fourth floor where reporters and staffers can visit him and, just as important, he can participate in the gathering of the day's news. Ideas and suggestions are solicited and acted upon. Previously excluded reporters are asked to sit in on editorial conferences and other management meetings.
However, the greatest changes have been in newsgathering techniques. There is a new emphasis on investigative reporting and with being first with a fast-breaking story. In the past, in-depth investigative journalism has rarely been in evidence on either paper. As one man at the Herald put it, "Before, it wasn't de-emphasized. It just didn't happen."
Johnson, aided by his city editor, Bill Hankins, now has special reporting teams assigned (0 ferret out and develop longer news stories.
More important is the instigation of a new technique in covering newsbeats such as county and city offices, federal agencies, and education. Under the modular system four or five rotating reporters are assigned to a general beat like the courthouse. The single reporter covering the same beat for the News is thus double-teamed on a fast news day.
AIRPORT RUNS AMUCK
Most Dallas News reporters aren't running scared, but morale in the news room is low and they are worried. As one reporter put it, "For the first time in the eight or nine years I've been here we are suffering because of the competition. The fourth floor (executive offices) has to realize we must have more reporters and pay better salaries or we will soon become a second-class paper."
From Senior Editor Griffin Smith, Jr., comes this report:
The popularity of the new Dallas Fort Worth Regional Airport is at a low ebb among air travelers, as every newspaper-reading, TV-watching Texan already knows. First-day passengers stumbled out of the four widely-separated terminals with glazed expressions, rather as though they had just seen the Gorgon.
Some had. Complaints of mangled and lost baggage were common. The Airtrans system of trains connecting the terminals malfunctioned in an imaginative number of ways, causing some passengers to miss their connections entirely. In no time at all the national news media discovered that the dollar-bill-changing machines returned only 95 ¢ in coins. Since the Airtrans system required passengers to deposit 25 ¢ exact change before boarding (for reasons that remained unclear, except that it allowed the operators to pass along to the passengers the inconvenience of finding that exact change, rather than providing it themselves), and since every public telephone in the terminals required 25 ¢ rather than a dime, (even for calls to another terminal within sight of the phone) the changing machines got more of a workout than might have been expected.
By week's end some of the baggage problems had been solved, but the rest of the indignities persisted. Nagging fog slowed operations. The coin-changers themselves became something of a cause celébre. Judging from the articles in the Morning News, most Dallasites were mortified—not because such little devils existed in Dallas' own airport, not because they skimmed a whopping five percent off the helpless customer's money, not even because they had been solemnly exposed on the CBS Sunday News, but because they had been ridiculed—ridiculed!—on the Tonight Show. Shame and scandal Dallas had endured and could endure again: but Johnny Carson's derision was more than civic pride could bear. Mayor Wes Wise promised to check into the situation.
Mayor Pro Tem George AIlen on the other hand, called a press conference to declare that "What should be the crowning glory of this entire region for years to come has been marred by nit-picking criticism." He defended the coin-changers ("Those machines cost a bunch of money") and he supported the 25 ¢ fee for Airtrans service. "People don't have to use Airtrans," he said—prophetically, as it turned out. "They can run."
Passengers at the airport on Friday afternoon, January 25, were confronted by an Airtrans system that had stopped operating altogether. Among them was a Texas Monthly editor who decided to put Councilman Allen's suggestion into practice and walk from the American Airlines terminal to his connecting flight at the Texas International terminal, rather than wait for a fleet of Surtran buses which were, according to airport employees, on the way to take the frustrated passengers where they wanted to go.
The first thing Texas MonthIy's obedient walker learned is that there are no sidewalks connecting the terminals. The pedestrian just takes his chances out there in the airport freeway along with whizzing cars, trucks, and buses. A man on foot elicits some round-eyed stares from motorists, and one is well-advised to glance regularly over his shoulder just in case a careening bus seems to want precisely the portion of the roadway he is currently occupying. An adroit sidestep into the adjacent mud is then called for.
The mud; that is the second thing: the mud. Unless one wishes to carry the freeway bit to its absurd conclusion and spiral around the cloverleafs and graceful curving driveways (strolling into the parking lot with a flourish), it is eventually necessary to leave the autostrada and take a shortcut across vast and mucky plazas upon which the landscape architects clearly intended that no human foot should ever be set. Soil that is congenial to St. Augustine grass clings energetically, it seems, to one's shoes.
A brisk walker wearing cleated shoes can, if he survives, make the trip in about fifteen minutes. Anyone who takes Councilman Allen's advice and runs the distance could consider going over Niagara Falls in a barrel for an encore.
The promised Surtran buses, apparently never did arrive. Some of the luckless passengers hailed a Surtran Taxi for the 90-second drive between terminals, only to discover that the drivers were charging—and getting—a $3 fare for the trip.
By the first of February, fog experts were speculating that the airport was in fact creating its own fog—the Manhattan-sized reaches of plowed, treeless, humid earth converting the whole region into a giant fog machine. Even the airlines themselves were beginning to get goosy about the place. A large poster behind the Texas International counter in Austin lured travelers with a winsome reminder that Airtrans could be avoided by making connections on the same Airline.
"When you're flying to Los Angeles," it said, "the last thing you want is a tour of the new Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport."
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