Futurists have called newspapers the last of the great smokestack industries--decrepit, dated, and destined to die. Fresh Ink offers proof that this need not be true. Newspapers are still a mass medium, able to gather a set of facts and create a sense of community each day--if they will. Fresh Ink tells how Robert Decherd and Burl Osborne transformed a flawed paper with a checkered history into the leading newspaper in the southwest, winning seven Pulitzer Prizes along the way, one of them for graphics--the only newspaper to ever do so. The focus is on a week in the life of The Dallas Morning News, the death a month later of the competing Dallas Times Herald, and how the News has conducted itself since.

By offering an inside look at what is arguably the most successful newspaper in the country, this book makes an important contribution to the history of journalism.