Revolution at Dallas Daily

D Magazine, Jun 01, 2004 by Flournoy, Craig

Six weeks later, ABC Channel 8 broke the story--resulting in the revocation of charges against more than 50 defendants. For its work, the television station, also owned by Belo, was awarded the duPont-Columbia and Peabody awards, the highest honors in broadcast journalism. Wilk concedes that the newspaper should have broken the story. "We clearly did not handle it as aggressively as we should have," he says.

Wyatt got a new tip in February: in 2000, beer distributor and philanthropist Bill Barrett had been kicked and scratched by his wife. Angie Barrett--a board member of a battered-women's shelter and a convicted felon--was charged with assault. Bill Barrett had asked District Attorney Bill Hill--who had received $2,000 in campaign contributions from him--to drop the charge. It was dismissed, six days after being filed, despite a tough policy on prosecuting domestic abuse. Wyatt wrote a story.

Bill Barrett, whose family had contributed $250,000 to the Dallas Morning News charity fund drive, says he asked Mong and Wilk to kill the story. They did. Wyatt was devastated: "The message sent was that the story was a sacred cow, and we couldn't touch it." Mong and Wilk say Barrett did not get favored treatment. A few weeks later, two reporters at the paper wrote a story about a district attorney in a neighboring county who chose not to prosecute two campaign donors accused of assaulting their spouses. The News ran it on page one.

Jeffrey Weiss, a religion reporter at the News, is a 16-year veteran. He is no rebel, but he understands the ripple effect when a story is stepped on. "You don't have to be bit more than once before you decide not to go back," he says. "The people who pursue investigative reporting at the Dallas Morning News do so out of an excess of determination."

ON NOVEMBER 7, 2002, Mong delivered a speech to several hundred employees of the News, in the same hotel where Moroney would give his "Revolution" speech 14 months later. Mong, like Moroney, made a long speech. Like Moroney, he called for improvement: "Don't you think we can be so much better?" he said. "You and I know that we can be." But he also defended the paper against "voices in our newsroom, speculating" that the News was slipping and was not as good as it was 10 years ago. "Clearly, in nearly every measurable way, we are far better today," he told the crowd, ticking off more than a dozen areas of coverage. The audience responded with polite applause.

These days, Mong endorses Moroney's call for a revolution in the culture of the News, and he believes he is the right person, with the publisher, to lead it. Moroney agrees. He says that several months ago, Mong put together a list of people who they "are methodically trying to attract to the newspaper to increase the number of great journalists."

Nearly a year after Mong's speech, on October 31, 2003, Moroney held a brownbag meeting with some 18 News reporters. Managers were barred. The publisher and the reporters talked for two hours. "Unprecedented," Weiss says.