Paul Watler's Perspective

Changing a city is not easy. Many try but few succeed. Here in Dallas, we have witnessed the dedication and commitment necessary to heal racial divide, promote economic opportunity and save lives and neighborhoods. In our city, that leadership comes from the Dallas Morning News, which recently was recognized with the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.

In late 2007, the newspaper launched an editorial project to address the stark north-south separation in the community. As the Trinity River divides the city, so too does the land of opportunity cleave in half in Dallas. North Dallas boasts glittering office towers, affluent residential neighborhoods and crowded shopping malls. South Dallas has largely been passed by, bedeviled by neglect and lack of development.

Editorial writers Colleen McCain Nelson, Bill McKenzie and Tod Robberson decided that the newspaper could do something about it. Under the leadership and guidance of editorial page editor Keven Willey and deputy editorial page editor Sharon Grigsby, the newspaper launched an unprecedented project to shine the light of public attention on a long-neglected area of the city.

The News didn’t simply decry the situation but it relentlessly addressed the problem. Rather than merely pointing out the obvious from a lofty perch, Nelson, McKenzie and Robberson took a micro view in examining the multitude of individual problems that collectively caused blight and wasted opportunity on a metropolitan scale. The newspaper outlined solutions and demanded results from city hall, property owners, residents, developers and community leaders. Neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street, it identified the decaying buildings and housing stock that required city code enforcement, the car wash that needed police attention to deal with open-air drug dealing, the vacant lots overrun with trash and stray dogs that must be remedied, the shuttered service stations and shops that frustrated development opportunities. Week after week, month after month, year after year, The News kept returning to the "drops in the buckets" needed to turn the situation around step-by-simple step. The newspaper steadfastly refused to let entrenched problems fade from the public conscience.

The editorial writers of the Dallas Morning News would be the first to acknowledge that the problems have not been solved and that the work is not complete. But slow, steady, incremental change is afoot, offering a bridge to begin closing the north-south divide.

This is why print journalism still matters in the Internet age. A metropolitan daily newspaper uniquely has the bully pulpit to illuminate a need and demand a solution. At Jackson Walker, our hats are off for a job well-done by an institution we are proud to claim as one of our clients.

— Paul Watler is a partner at Jackson Walker. He can be reached at pwatler@jw.com.