Houston Chronicle: Difference between revisions
Daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, US
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, United States. As of April 2016,[update] it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. With its 1995 buy-out of long-time rival the Houston Post, the Chronicle became Houston’s newspaper of record.
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper owned and operated by the Hearst Corporation, a privately held multinational corporate media conglomerate with $10 billion in revenues. The paper employs nearly 2,000 people, including approximately 300 journalists, editors, and photographers. The Chronicle has bureaus in Washington, D.C., and Austin. It reports that its web site averages 125 million page views per month.[2]
The publication serves as the “newspaper of record” of the Houston area.[3] Previously headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building at 801 Texas Avenue, Downtown Houston, the Houston Chronicle is now located at 4747 Southwest Freeway.[4]
In addition to its daily print edition, the Chronicle offers Chron.com, a free online-only, ad-supported newspaper covering breaking news, weather, traffic, pop culture, and city life. Houstonchronicle.com, launched in 2012, is a subscriber-only paper that contains everything found in the daily print edition.[5]
History[edit]
From its inception, the practices and policies of the Houston Chronicle were shaped by strong-willed personalities who were the publishers. The history of the newspaper can be best understood when divided into the eras of these individuals.
1901–1926: Marcellus E. Foster era[edit]
The Houston Chronicle was founded in 1901 by a former reporter for the now-defunct Houston Post, Marcellus E. Foster. Foster, who had been covering the Spindletop oil boom for the Post, invested in Spindletop and took $30 of the return on that investment—at the time equivalent to a week’s wages—and used it to fund the Chronicle.
The Chronicle‘s first edition was published on October 14, 1901, and sold for two cents per copy, at a time when most papers sold for five cents each. At the end of its first month in operation, the Chronicle had a circulation of 4,378—roughly one tenth of the population of Houston at the time.[6] Within the first year of operation, the paper purchased and consolidated the Daily Herald.
In 1908, Foster asked Jesse H. Jones, a local businessman and prominent builder, to construct a new office and plant for the paper, “and offered [a] half-interest in the newspaper as a down payment, with twenty years to pay the remainder. Jones agreed, and the resulting Chronicle Building was one of the finest in the South.”[6][7]
Under Foster, the paper’s circulation grew from about 7,000 in 1901 to 75,000 on weekdays and 85,000 on Sundays by 1926. Foster continued to write columns under the pen name Mefo, and drew much attention in the 1920s for his opposition to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). He sold the rest of his interest to Jesse H. Jones on June 26, 1926, and promptly retired.[8]
Goodfellows[edit]
In 1911, city editor George Kepple started Goodfellows.[10] On Christmas Eve 1911, Kepple passed a hat among the Chronicle‘s reporters to collect money to buy toys for a shoe-shine boy.
Goodfellows continues today through donations made by the newspaper and its readers. It has grown into a citywide program that provides needy children between the ages of two and ten with toys during the winter holidays. In 2003, Goodfellows distributed almost 250,000 toys to more than 100,000 needy children in the Greater Houston area.
1926–1956: Jesse H. Jones era[edit]
In 1926, Jesse H. Jones became the sole owner of the paper. He had approached Foster about selling, and Foster had answered, “What will you give me?” Jones described the buyout of Foster as follows:
Wanting to be liberal with Foster if I bought him out, since he had created the paper and originally owned most of the stock, and had made a success of it, I thought for a while before answering and finally asked him how much he owed. He replied, “On real estate and everything about 200,000 dollars.” I then said to him that I would give him 300,000 dollars in cash, having in mind that this would pay his debts and give him 100,000 spending money. In addition, I would give him a note for 500,000 secured by a mortgage on the Chronicle Building, the note to be payable (interest and principal) at the rate of 35,000 a year for thirty-five years, which I figured was about his expectancy. I would also pay him 20,000 dollars a year as editor of the paper and 6,000 dollars a year to continue writing the daily front-page column, “MEFO”, on the condition that either of us could cancel the editorship and/or the MEFO-column contracts on six months’ notice, and…