Open letter to Robert Decherd: It’s a wonderful life
To: Robert Decherd, Chairman, President and CEO, A.H. Belo Corp.
From: Dallas News Guild Organizing Committee
Dear Mr. Decherd,
We don’t know if anyone ever told you this before, but your life is a lot like George Bailey’s in It’s a Wonderful Life. You both faced the same choices about whether to stay or go.
If your life were a movie, the key scene would take place in 1972. You’re 21 years old, a senior at Harvard, and you have your sights set on making a name for yourself as a reporter on an East Coast newspaper. You want to make it on your own without family sway or special privilege.
You’re the top person at The Crimson student newspaper, and you’re in a Boston restaurant meeting with all the other editors to pick your successors.
There’s a phone call for you. It’s your mother telling you it’s time to come home. Your father is very ill. You return to the meeting and don’t say anything. But when it’s over you rush to pack and get on a late plane to Texas. You arrive in time to see your father before he passes away.
In your grief, afterward, you face a momentous choice. Do you want to follow through with your plans to fly solo? Or do you want to come home and take your spot in the family business? And if you do take your spot at The Dallas Morning News, can you use the position to improve the life of your community through journalism and philanthropy?
Just like George Bailey, you make a decision you haven’t originally intended. But as time proves, like George, you make a big difference in the universe.
Robert Decherd, our CEO.
What would the world be like if you hadn’t taken that path? For one thing, there might not be the thousands of jobs you created and fostered as you took the company public and built a media empire – including four daily newspapers and 20 TV stations in what was then the largest broadcast acquisition in history. There were nine Pulitzer prizes, and a front-page feature on you in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed The Morning News “a newspaper of distinction.”
And there’s you and your wife’s philanthropy. Saving the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and also Paul Quinn College. Endowing the journalism/communications department at University of Texas and creating the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. And of course, the urban parks you pushed through.
Now, with your return as CEO after several years away, your commitment to the community, to journalism and to your family’s legacy is there for all to see. Most of your colleagues who ran family-owned newspapers sold out long ago to big chains. You could have, but you didn’t. Bravo, a thousand times over.
This note is not to argue the merits of unionization. We’ll talk more about the newspaper at Tuesday’s Town Hall meeting you’re set to lead. We simply want you to know that many of us may be young, but we know that what you and the company have accomplished is something special.
The true point of our open letter to you is to show you that just as you got the call to come home and devote the next half century of your life to the family calling, well, we received a similar call, too.
The proof is that nearly 100 of us who created the new Dallas News Guild are fighting for the integrity of strong, local journalism to help North Texas communities and also to foster democracy.
We want The Dallas Morning News to survive and prosper. Just like you do.
Like George Bailey, both you and us have placed community interests above our own. Mr. Decherd, we’re here to help you save the paper. You can’t do it without us, and we can’t do it without you. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
We believe that in the past several months with the hard work we’ve done during the coronavirus for less pay, longer hours and reduced staff, we proved how serious and committed we are.
In fact, you may not have had a more committed staff than the one you have now, and we are ready to fight for the future alongside you.
It wasn’t easy getting almost 100 newsroom staffers to sign union cards. But our hope is that you hear us and know that we believe in the same dream as you.
You once said in an interview that the key to great leadership is this: “You take people who have sometimes radically different perspectives and help them agree about where there’s common ground.”
Following your philosophy, we look forward to working with you, Grant, Leona and Katy, Mike and Keith and the rest of your team. Our team. We want to succeed. Thank you for reading this, and see you at the Town Hall.
Most sincerely,
THE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
George B. Dealey founded and ran The Morning News for an amazing 65 years. Mr. Dealey came to the office every Sunday after church to personally answer each letter he received. He also insisted on meeting every new person hired into the company. Robert Decherd is his great-grandson — and a rare fourth-generation newspaper owner.
