The March 24, 2006 front page of The Dallas Morning News
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	Belo Corp
Publisher	James M. Moroney III
Editor	Robert W. Mong, Jr.
Founded	1885
Headquarters	508 Young Street Dallas, Texas 75202  United States
Circulation	411,919 Daily[1] 563,079 Sunday[2]
Website: DallasNews.com

The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas (USA) area, with a circulation of around a half-million subscribers. Today it has one of the twenty largest paid circulations in the United States. Throughout the 1990s and as recently as 2005, the DMN has won numerous Pulitzers for both reporting and photography, George Polk Awards for education reporting and regional reporting, and an Overseas Press Club award for photography.

The paper also publishes Quick, a free weekday daily with abbreviated news primarily catering to 20- 30-year-olds, created partly in response to lagging circulation and readership numbers, and partly to head off a rival publication (which has since gone out of business), hoping to increase overall readership by eventually converting Quick readers into Morning News readers.

Belo Corp owns the papers, both of which are headquartered in downtown Dallas.

Dominant Dallas newspaper

In late 1991, the "DMN" became the lone major newspaper in the Dallas market, when its rival The Dallas Times Herald was closed after several years of hard-fought circulation wars between the two papers, especially over the then-burgeoning classified advertising market. In July of 1986, the Times Herald was purchased by a fledgling newspaper empresario, the now-controversial William Dean Singleton. After 18 months of tepid efforts to turn the paper around, Singleton sold it to an associate, and on 8 December 1991, Belo Corp bought the Times Herald for $55 million, closing the paper the next day.

The fact that Singleton had begun his newspaper career at the Morning News in the 1970s fueled speculation that they had been behind the entire sale and closure of their rival paper. While the News obviously stood to benefit, no evidence was ever proffered of behavior outside the bounds of the admittedly-rough newspaper trade.

Ironically, it was not the first time the Belo Corp had bought (and closed) a paper named The Herald in Dallas; according the Texas State Historical Association, 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." [1]

The DMN is sometimes called "the DaMN paper" or simply "the DaMN" by Dallas-area liberals because of its conservative-leaning editorial page. However, the DMN did harshly criticize the 2003 Texas redistricting.

Circulation controversy

The Dallas Morning News has had an ongoing problem with its circulation numbers, being accused of inflating them to keep advertiser revenue high. In the mid-1980s, the paper was sued by the rival Times Herald, charging that the News was overstating circulation increases. In 2004, long after the Times Herald had ceased printing, The Dallas Morning News admitted it had indeed underreported circulation decreases, overstating Sunday circulation by 11.9% and daily circulation by 5.1%. The Morning News promised to pay advertisers US$23 million in restitution. The circulation problems worsened parent company Belo's financial condition and in late 2004, Belo laid off 250 workers, including 150 at the Morning News. Two years later, The News offered a voluntary severance package that more than 100 staffers took.

Pulitzer Prizes

• 1986 -- National Reporting
• 1989 -- Explanatory Journalism
• 1991 -- Feature Photography
• 1992 -- Investigative Reporting
• 1993 -- Spot News Photography
• 1994 -- International Reporting
• 2004 -- Breaking News Photography
• 2006 -- Breaking News Photography

George Polk Awards

• 1990 -- Gayle Reaves, David Hanners, and David McLemore for regional reporting
• 1994 -- Olive Talley for education reporting

Overseas Press Club Awards

• 2001 -- Cheryl Diaz Meyer for photographic reporting from abroad

Editorial staff

• James M. Moroney III; Publisher and Chief Executive Officer
• Robert W. Mong, Jr.; Editor
• George Rodrigue; Vice President, Managing Editor
• Keven Ann Willey; Vice President, Editorial Page Editor

References

External links

• The Dallas Morning News
• Dallas Morning News from the Handbook of Texas Online

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