About Our Donors
A.H. Belo
Construction of the Belo Center for New Media is made possible by the generous support of The Belo Foundation, Maureen H. and Robert W. Decherd, and the Moroney family. Donations are in recognition of the historic contributions Alfred Horatio Belo, George Bannerman Dealey, Joe M. Dealey, H. Ben Decherd and James M. Moroney Jr. made to the newspaper and television industries.
About The Belo Foundation
The Belo Foundation was established in 1952 and has funded more than $39 million in grants since its inception. Funded through the years by Belo Corp., the Foundation concentrates its grants on college-level journalism education and urban public parks in states where Belo Corp. has operating companies.
The Foundation is governed by four trustees led by Marian Spitzberg, president of The Belo Foundation. Ms. Spitzberg earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley and graduated cum laude from the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University. She is past chair of the Dallas Bar Foundation Board of Trustees and serves on the Executive Board of the Dedman School of Law. Other Foundation trustees are Robert W. Decherd, Ward L. Huey, Jr. and Burl Osborne.
G.B. Dealey
Belo Corp. is the oldest continuously-operated business in the state of Texas and one of the nation’s largest media companies with a diversified group of television, newspaper, cable and interactive media assets. A Fortune 1000 company with 7,000 employees, Belo owns 20 television stations, and also operates six cable news channels. Belo’s daily newspapers are The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal, The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA) and the Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, TX). The Company also publishes specialty publications including Quick and Al Dia in Dallas/Fort Worth, and La Prensa in Riverside. Belo operates more than 30 Web sites associated with its operating companies.
Dealey grandsons, left to right: James M.
(Jimmy) Moroney, Jr., Joe Dealey, and
Ben Decherd
Belo was established in 1842 as The Daily News in Galveston, Texas. In 1865, Colonel Alfred Horatio Belo joined The Daily News and in 1875 he became the majority owner, naming the company A.H. Belo & Co. In 1882, Belo sent a promising young employee, George Bannerman Dealey, to select a location for a newspaper in North Texas. Three years later, The Dallas Morning News began publishing under Dealey’s direction. Dealey eventually became president of the company. When he bought out the Belo heirs in 1926, he changed the name of the company to A.H. Belo Corporation out of respect for the Belo family.
Three of G.B. Dealey’s grandsons, H. Ben Decherd, Joe M. Dealey, and James M. (Jimmy) Moroney, Jr., followed in his footsteps and became chairmen of Belo Corp. The Dealey family legacy has continued with the current generation – the chairman of Belo Corp., Robert W. Decherd, and the publisher of The Dallas Morning News, James M. (Jim) Moroney III, are G.B. Dealey’s great-grandsons.
Ben Decherd, Joe Dealey and Jimmy Moroney graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 1936, 1941 and 1943, respectively. Jim Moroney III earned a Master of Business Administration from The University of Texas at Austin in 1983, and is a former member of the UT College of Communication Foundation Advisory Council.
About Maureen and Robert Decherd
Maureen Decherd
Maureen H. Decherd is president of The Decherd Foundation, a private foundation in Dallas that has primarily supported education and health and human services since its establishment in 1993. Maureen is a 1973 graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, a member of the UT Liberal Arts Foundation Advisory Council, and serves on the Commission of 125. She is also an honorary graduate of St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas, and is currently working on her Master’s degree in Liberal Arts at Southern Methodist University.
Robert Decherd
Robert W. Decherd has worked for Belo Corp. since his graduation from Harvard College in 1973. He has been Belo’s chairman and chief executive officer since 1987, and has served on the boards of numerous industry, journalism and civic organizations. Belo newspaper and television stations have won 13 Pulitzer Prizes, 21 Alfred I. duPont Columbia Awards, 20 George Foster Peabody Awards, and 31 national Edward R. Murrow Awards, most of which have been awarded during Robert’s tenure.
About the Moroney Family
James M. (Jimmy)
Moroney, Jr.
The Estate of James M. Moroney, Jr. has pledged support to the Belo Center for New Media in memory of James M. (Jimmy) Moroney, Jr., as has the Jim and Lynn Moroney Family Foundation by its trustees, Molly Moroney Norrett, Melinda Ann Moroney Penrose, Michael W. Moroney, and James M. Moroney III. Additional support has been provided by American Electric Power, where Jimmy served as a director from 1988 to1992. Jimmy was a pivotal figure in Belo Corp.’s decision to go public in 1981 and vigorously supported the Company’s expansion in television, newspapers and the Internet until his death in 2007.
