Newspapers in Houston 

 

Houston Chronicle

Bayou City has a long, full history of print journalism

 Oct. 14, 2001

 

"IN 1835, Houstonian Gail Borden Jr. co-founded what historians say is the state’s first continuously published newspaper, the Telegraph and Texas Register.

 

Originally published at San Felipe de Austin, nine days after the Texas Revolution began, it provided a detailed contemporaneous account of Texas’ struggle for independence. Its accounts of the Alamo, Goliad and San Jacinto are still cited by historians.

 

To publish, Borden and his partners had to stay one step ahead of the advancing Mexican army, which caught up with him at Harrisburg and dumped the presses into the bayou. Undaunted, the owners bought new equipment and began publishing at Columbia.

 

Borden sold the paper in the spring of 1837 when the capital of Texas moved to Houston. Tired of newspapering, Borden went on to other things, most notably making condensed milk.

 

Having survived the revolution and Civil War, the newspaper fell on hard times in 1873 and finally folded in 1881.

 

Newspapers and political sheets sprouted like bluebonnets in Houston in the mid-19th century. Most would publish only a few issues, then die.

 

J.W.J. Niles started the National Banner here in 1838. E. Humphreys published the first daily newspaper in Texas, the Morning Star, on April 8, 1839.

 

In 1880, Gail Borden Johnson, grandson of Gail Borden Jr., started the Houston Evening Post. Johnson tried for three years to make a go of it but had to sell out.

 

The new investors put $300,000 into the paper, quickly establishing it as one of the leading papers in the South. But meager returns forced backers to tighten the purse strings, and the Post was forced to suspend publication after the recession of 1883.

 

A year later, Dr. S.O. Young, an associate editor at the defunct Post, started the Houston Morning Chronicle. The paper struggled for 18 months, then joined with the afternoon Evening Journal and re-emerged as the Houston Daily Post. It launched on April 5, 1885, later became the Houston Post and would publish for 110 years.

 

About this time, young William H. Bailey began publishing an afternoon paper called the Houston Herald. Bailey quickly established his dislike for the competition, saying that "the Chronicle and Journal swallowed each other and became as rigid as a Post."

 

The Post of this period became known for its writers, including political reporter Rienzi Melville Johnston, who later became editor in chief; William Sydney Porter, a reporter who would later take the name O. Henry, and Marcellus E. "Mefo" Foster, a correspondent in Huntsville who later rose to managing editor.

 

In 1897, Johnston installed a machine that would set type, replacing the laborious process of doing it by hand. It is believed to be the first used by any newspaper west of the Mississippi.

 

In 1901, Foster turned a modest investment in Spindletop into $5,000 and used it to help start a new evening newspaper, the Houston Chronicle. Within a year, he had absorbed the Herald.

 

The Chronicle and Post were the last two standing, but not until 1964 did they have the daily newspaper field to themselves.

 

In 1910 alone, five papers were founded here: the Houston Times, the Houston Record, the Sunday Morning Advertiser and the Texas Tradesman. In 1911, these were joined by the Houston Examiner and the Houston Press (which is not associated with the current alternative weekly).

 

The Press, edited by Paul C. Edwards in its infancy, did not run a line of advertising during its first 58 days in operation, reasoning that it had insufficient circulation to merit merchants’ ad dollars.

 

Over the years, many specialized publications have served targeted local markets.

 

The Suburbanite, published at 316 Harvard St. in the Heights, had a down-home appeal, as typified by this report on Feb. 18, 1914: "Miss Ida Irdman, who was shot by her brother a week ago, has returned from the sanitarium and is getting along nicely."

 

The Facts began publishing in 1911 "for the purpose of placing the FACTS on the state-wide prohibition question before the voters of Texas." The rigidly anti-prohibition paper was distributed in both Dallas and Houston.

 

The masthead of the Investigator (1921), the handiwork of publisher Ernest Thorp, carried the motto: "Just to Bring Us Back to Earth and Spread a Little Sunshine."

 

Mrs. J. Edward Hodges published The Mirror, its logo promising to "cover Houston like a blanket."

 

The Cotton Digest was, not surprisingly, "devoted to the cotton industry in its various branches."

 

The Guardsman guarded "agriculture, industry and the security of Texas."

 

C.F. Richardson is credited with leading a group of black businessmen in launching the Houston Observer in 1916. He left the paper three years later and founded The Informer (later The Informer & Texas Freeman).

 

C.W. Rice was editor and publisher of The Negro Labor News, "A Paper That’s Different." In a Dec. 22, 1934, editorial, it advocated "better health and living conditions for colored people, better understanding between races, better understanding between employers and employees, the right person on the right job with the right pay, and statewide and managed institutions for the Negro tubucular."

 

The Texas World, first published in 1900, labeled Houston "the Magnolia City" and in 1906 admonished that "if you like liquor and have not the manhood or womanhood to control your appetite, quit, but don’t try to dictate to people who know and feel they have sense enough to know how much to take."

 

The Houston Bulletin — motto: "Always Boosting Houston" — wrote in 1916 that "the actual population of Houston is 149,570, found by counting names in the 1915 directory." At the time, the city had "36 skyscrapers of six stories and over, ranging up to 18 stories. Houston challenges comparison with any city in the world of equal size to show as many tall buildings."

 

One of the most colorful personalities on the newspaper scene was Col. Billie Mayfield, publisher of Colonel Mayfield’s Weekly. Under the paper’s banner was this bit of business: "Just to Pep Up the Game, This Slow Life is Killing Me."

 

The colonel had little use for the Chronicle, noting in December 1921: "Just as I was getting the people of this country thoroughly aroused against the modern evils, that old sheet has actually started a campaign for shorter skirts, bust revealing waists and the jazz dance."

 

A few days later, when the Chronicle suggested that stores be opened the day after Christmas, a headline in his paper summarized his outrage:

 

"Cut Out Christmas

 

Is Chronicle Idea.

 

The Colonel Rears and Storms

 

All Over the Place at Suggestion.

 

It Took Three Men to Hold Him.

 

Doctors Quieted Him."

 

While Mayfield could be colorful, his politics were more black-and-white. He criticized "certain businesses run by certain Jews" and was a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan.

 

The colonel used his paper to publicize his unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor. Light in the pocket, he soon left the publishing business.

 

He wasn’t the only one. Dead in short order from a lack of advertising were the South Houston Times (launched in 1914), the Southern Shipper (1918), Houston Saturday Night (1920), The Texan (1923), Southland Farmer (1925) and La Tribuna (1927).

 

In 1923, soon after the Houston Dispatch was launched, oil millionaire Ross Sterling took over, then bought the Houston Post and combined them into the Post-Dispatch.

 

Eight years later, however, the paper was sold at auction. J.E. Josey, chairman of the National Standard Life Insurance Co., bought it and resumed publishing, dropping "Dispatch" from the newspaper’s name.

 

Still more newspapers came and went: The Daily Court Review, The Eastender, The West End News, The Examiner, The Houstonian, Texan Weekly, The Times, El Tecolote, The Examiner, The Heights Citizen, The Hyde Park News-Journal, La Tribuna Italiana, La Voce Della Patria.

 

Beginning with World War II, the number of newspapers began to decline. Financial hardship was the usual reason, not helped by a new wage-and-hour law.

 

By the late ’50s, that decline had leveled off, perhaps because of the rise of offset printing, a cleaner and cheaper way of handling type.

 

The daily field was cut to two in 1964, when Scripps-Howard sold The Press’ assets to the Chronicle for $4 million, and to one in 1995, when the Chronicle bought The Post’s assets from MediaNews Group for $120 million.

 

In the interim, a new alternative weekly, also called The Houston Press, was established. But even if it hadn’t been, the Chronicle would still not be the only publisher in town."

 

— Mike McDaniel

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