Ken Johnson, who knew how to run newspapers large and small, is dead at 74

Ken Johnson, who raised the standards of daily journalism in Texas and then scored financial success as an owner of community newspapers, was buried yesterday in Dallas. He died Sunday at the age of 74.

Johnson was best known as executive editor of the Dallas Times Herald, "which he transformed into a Pulitzer Prize-winning publication. The ensuing fierce competition between the Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News lifted journalistic standards across the region and state," wrote Joe Simnacher of the Morning News.

As the Times Herald slowly lost the war, in 1983, Johnson left the paper. He and partner Will Jarrett formed Westward Communications and in 1986 "began buying small newspapers the next year, after what they called their 'Wal-Mart strategy' of concentrating on small towns," writes Douglas Martin of The New York Times. "They came to own 41 newspapers and nine shoppers in Texas, Colorado, Louisiana and Arkansas. In 1997, the two men sold the properties to an Ohio group for what Business Week said was more than $80 million. The American Journalism Review in 1999 suggested that Mr. Jarrett and Mr. Johnson had each made $20 million to $25 million on the deal." (Read more)

Johnson was born in Huntington, W.Va., and grew up in Bristol, Va., where he began his newspaper career as a copy boy in 1953, Simnacher wrote. He was managing editor of the Savannah Morning News and a top executive at The Washington Post before going to Dallas. (Read more)