[1][2] Johnson moved to Washington, D.C., in 1965, where he spent a year as an assistant to George Elliott Hagan, a Democratic Party member of Congress from Georgia.
A bitter competition arose between the Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News that improved reporting across the state but placed both publications in financial difficulty.
Investigative coverage by the paper under Johnson included reports on police brutality, imbalances in city property tax appraisals and recruiting violations across football teams in the Southwest Conference.
Johnson hired Bill Keller, later executive editor of The New York Times, and newspaper columnist / political commentator Molly Ivins.
[4] In 1985, Johnson formed Westward Communications together with Will D. Jarrett, his former editor at the Times Herald, which bought a series of 41 newspapers and nine shoppers in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana and Texas, primarily in small towns.