When Bill Minutaglio took a job at The Dallas Morning News in 1983, the century-old newspaper had begun a remarkable revival. Under the leadership of CEO Robert Decherd—great-grandson of the Morning News’ founding publisher, George Bannerman Dealey—and flush with money raised by going public two years earlier, the company was spending millions hiring some of the country’s best editors, reporters, and photographers.The investment paid off. A paper that had never won a Pulitzer Prize bagged the industry’s highest honor six times between 1986 and 1994 and grew its circulation to more than half a million daily subscribers. The 1991 collapse of its crosstown rival, the Dallas Times Herald, gave the Morning News a lucrative monopoly in what was then the country’s eighth-largest city. In good…