The dismantlement of the Dallas Morning
News newsroom has begun as it prepares to shift operations from its home at 508
Young St. to the old Dallas Public Library, which has sat empty and abandoned
on the other side of downtown for almost four decades.
The move will breathe new life into an
historic Dallas landmark, but alas it also will be another mournful peal of
doom for newspapers in general, the DMN in particular.
The News, of course, is depicting the fateful
omen in flowery language and disguising the disaster with positive, optimistic
prose. I’ve seen these performances before – the earnest gazes, the calm-voiced
assurances that nothing is wrong, all is well – and I sadly predict there will
be no happy endings here.
My friends and family know I derive no
pleasure from such gloomy predictions. I spent a quarter of a century working
at 508 Young, sharing the newsroom with some of the finest journalists this
country has produced.
Some of my happiest days – and some of my
saddest – occurred in that building with the proud, imposing – and more than a
little pompous and overblown – façade:
“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 question.”
And when the last computer terminal has
been packed, the last telephone console taken away, the
work cubicles disassembled and stacked, I will mourn.
That’s what you do when proud institutions
fade away and disappear into the dustbin of history. And despite the fact that
the DMN kicked me to the curb in 2011 during one of its many rounds of layoffs,
I’ll shed a tear or two when the doors are finally shuttered later this year.
DMN executives say the move will provide
the newspaper with an opportunity to create a true digitally focused newsroom,
as if that was a good thing. Trouble is, the “digital first” philosophy
heralded by Editor Mike Wilson has done nothing but damage the print edition –
the enterprise’s only cash cow worth mentioning – and steepened the death glide
the DMN has been in since the early 2000s.
Readers continue to rush for the exits, as
do advertisers. The rise in digital revenues trumpeted with such fanfare each
quarter are no match for the plummeting revenues everywhere else.
Almost as an aside, DMN suits acknowledge
that another impetus for the move is a financial one. By renting office space
in the renovated Library building across town, the newspaper can save $1
million in annual operating expenses at 508 Young.
So read the move for what it really is –
another desperate cost-cutting measure by an organization fighting a losing battle
for its very existence. All too soon, this cost-saving effort will be followed by
other cuts – almost certainly from the ranks of dedicated men and women who
toil in an increasingly demanding sweatshop lashed daily with exhortations to “do
more with less.”
I haven’t been back to the newsroom since
the day I left six years ago, accompanied by two old friends on the long,
lonely walk down the hall to the back dock. Life is good in my second career, and
I have no desire to return to the place where my 37-year journalism career
ended in embarrassment and heartbreak. At least not in person.
Because I have vivid memories of the
newsroom that I left for the last time shortly after noon on Sept. 6, 2011.
I remember the first time I entered it in the summer of 1985, amazed at the size of it and energized – as I was on a daily basis – by the hustle and bustle of a newspaper on deadline.
I remember the first time I entered it in the summer of 1985, amazed at the size of it and energized – as I was on a daily basis – by the hustle and bustle of a newspaper on deadline.
I can see the row of clocks I sat under
during my decade and a half on the foreign desk, their faces showing the time
in capitals across the globe. Who cares what time it is in London unless you
have a correspondent for whom you are responsible living and working there?
I see, as if it were yesterday, the corner
of the room where I sat in 1989 when the call came summoning me to West Texas to
see my father one last time (my mother telling me bleakly, “And bring your
suit.”).
A year and a half later, I watched the TV
set above the same desk as the ABC Evening News cut to a live shot from Baghdad.
U.S. bombs were falling, and we were at war. In a planning meeting 20 minutes
later, I remember the look of horror on News Editor Walt Stallings’ face when
he was told we were adding a 10-page section to the first edition, whose
deadline was only an hour away. We busted deadline, but the special section
made all editions.
I can see Mary Carter, surrounded by dozens
of colleagues, sitting at a terminal scrolling the AP wire as we all waited for
the bulletin we already knew would officially announce we had won the 1994
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. One of the advantages of having
your publisher on the Pulitzer board is the champagne can be chilling on ice
for the celebration.
Over there is my cubicle on the metro desk
where I picked up the phone one summer day in 2005 and heard an excited Dave Levinthal
tell me FBI agents had descended on City Hall and were carrying boxes of
documents out of Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill’s office. Four years later, Hill would
go to prison for bribery.
And I can remember the overwhelming
despair that swept over me as I sat in my cubicle by the western windows of the
newsroom and stared at the ringing phone I knew would be a call from HR,
informing me my days as a newspaperman were over.
Yes, I’ve been to the DMN newsroom many
times since I left, and I suspect I’ll be back more times still. I left too
much of my heart and soul there – and whatever talent I had – for it to be
otherwise.
The DMN owners are still trying to figure
out what to do with the five-story structure at 508 Young. They’d like to sell it,
but so far have found no takers.
Anywhere else, it already would be
designated an historic landmark. Opened in 1949, it was designed by architect
George Dahl, who also designed Fair Park’s art deco buildings and,
coincidentally, the Public Library building that will be the DMN’s next home.
Then there is the three-story “Rock of
Truth” façade, which everyone agrees ought to be saved, if only they can figure
out how to do it without bankrupting Croesus.
But the land upon which it sits just may be too valuable. The city covets it in order to create an entertainment district
adjacent to the Convention Center and the Omni Hotel. Renovating the
68-year-old DMN building for such a purpose probably doesn’t fit into any
financial equation.
Remember, too, this is Dallas, where
historic preservation is a joke, so don’t be surprised if it eventually falls
prey to the wrecking ball. And perhaps that is best.
Any new owners of the building might be
discomforted by the ghosts that almost certainly will haunt the place. It’ll be
a raucous crowd, noisy and profane and prone to practical jokes, most in very
poor taste.
The new tenants will find it strange as each
day throughout the late afternoon and early evening, the atmosphere of the building
is seized by a growing sense of urgency, a rising level of stress and tension,
followed shortly after 7 p.m. by a sudden whoosh of relief. A sense of calm then
will fall over the building, as it and its ghostly inhabitants celebrate
another successful sprint to the first-edition deadline.
