The Dallas Morning News

The Dallas Morning News main printing plant and distribution center in Plano, Texas.

The Dallas Morning News was founded in 1885 as a spin-off of the Galveston Daily News by Alfred Horatio Belo. In 1926, the Belo family sold a majority interest in the paper to its longtime publisher, George Dealey.

In 1904, The Dallas Morning News began publishing the Texas Almanac, which had previously been published intermittently during the 1800s by the Galveston Daily News. After over a century of publishing by the Morning News, the Almanac's assets were gifted to the Texas State Historical Association in May 2008.[7]

Building previously used and occupied by The Dallas Morning News.

By the late 1940s, the Morning News had built and opened a new office, newsroom, and printing plant at Houston and Young Streets on the southwest side of downtown Dallas. A notable part of the facade above the front doors includes a quote etched in the stony exterior:

BUILD THE NEWS UPON
THE ROCK OF TRUTH
AND RIGHTEOUSNESS
CONDUCT IT ALWAYS
UPON THE LINES OF
FAIRNESS AND INTEGRITY
ACKNOWLEDGE THE RIGHT
OF THE PEOPLE TO GET
FROM THE NEWSPAPER
BOTH SIDES OF EVERY
IMPORTANT QUESTION
                         G. B. DEALEY

The complex at 508 Young Street would house all or part of the Morning News operations for the next six decades.

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

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.[8][9]

Al Día logo

In 2003, a Spanish-language newspaper was launched by The Dallas Morning News, called Al Día. Initially Al Día came with a purchase price, but in recent years the newspaper has been made available free of charge. It is published twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday.[10]

Between 2003 and 2011, a tabloid-sized publication called Quick was published by The Dallas Morning News, which initially focused on general news in a quick-read, digest form, but in later years covered mostly entertainment and lifestyle stories.

In late 2013, The Dallas Morning News ended its longtime newsgathering collaboration with previously-co-owned TV station WFAA. The newspaper entered into a new partnership with KXAS at that time.[11]

Newspaper vending machine with copies of The Dallas Morning News, in front of a restaurant in northeast Dallas, 2019.

Historically, the Morning News has tilted conservative, mirroring Texas′ drift to the Republican Party since the 1950s.[12] However, on September 7, 2016 it endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, the first time it had endorsed a Democrat for president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.[13] This came a day after it ran a scathing editorial declaring Republican candidate Donald Trump "not qualified to serve as president." It was the first time that the paper had refused to endorse a Republican since 1964.[14] Then, in wake of the approaching 2018 midterm elections, the Morning News once again endorsed a Democratic candidate: Beto O'Rourke, the challenger to incumbent Senator Ted Cruz.[15]

In late 2016 it was announced that The Dallas Morning News would move away from its home of 68 years on Young Street, to a building on Commerce Street previously used by the Dallas Public Library for its downtown branch. The Commerce Street address is one-third the size of the Young Street complex. Reasons given for the move included technology innovations, fewer staff, as well as printing presses no longer co-located with the newsroom and main offices (printing is done now mainly at a facility in Plano, north of Dallas).[16][17] By December 2017, the move was completed.[18] The former property at 508 Young was sold by October 2018 to a business partnership, which was looking into possible redevelopment opportunities for the complex,[19][20] but in December 2018 the partnership backed out of the deal.[21]

Changes were announced in January 2019 which included staff layoffs (including editorial, arts/culture, and business) and reducing the paper's Business section to one separate section per week, on Sunday; the remainder of the week, Business coverage would be found in the paper's Metro section. A total of 43 employees were affected by the move.[22][23]

In late February 2019, several printing agreements were not renewed at the Morning News suburban printing plant, and 92 positions were affected by the change there. Publications that had to find a different printing partner included Dallas Observer and Fort Worth Weekly.[24]

• List of newspapers in Texas
• Fort Worth Star-Telegram

• Gelsanliter, David (1995). Fresh Ink: Behind the Scenes of a Major Metropolitan Newspaper. Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press. ISBN 092939884X.
• Reed, Roy (September 1998). "State of The American Newspaper: Giant". American Journalism Review. College Park: University of Maryland Foundation.
• Segura, Judith Garrett (2008). BELO: From Newspapers to New Media. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 9780292718463

• Official site
• Sports Day DFW, further sports news coverage
• Guidelive, news/listings of local entertainment/events
• Al Día Spanish-language newspaper
• Archive of The Dallas Morning News issues (1885-1984) at NewsBank
• "Behind the Pages", look behind the scenes of the paper's operation
• Video tour of the Morning News office space
• Dallas Morning News from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Text of The Dallas Morning News historical marker from Texas Historic Sites Atlas (Texas Historical Commission)
• Photos inside and outside former Dallas Morning News complex