Хьюстонская Хроника: История и современность крупнейшей газеты Техаса

Daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, US

The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, United States. as of 2016, 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. The publication serves as the "newspaper of record" of the Houston area. Previously headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building at 801 Texas Avenue, Downtown Houston, the Houston Chronicle is now located at 4747 Southwest Freeway. 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.

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.

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 Chronicles 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. 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." 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.

In 1911, city editor George Kepple started Goodfellows. On Christmas Eve 1911, Kepple passed a hat among the Chronicles 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.

On May 1, 1987, the Hearst Corporation purchased the Houston Chronicle from Houston Endowment for $415 million. Richard J. V. Johnson, who had joined the paper as a copy editor in 1956, and worked up to executive vice president in 1972, and president in 1973, remained as chairman and publisher until he retired on April 1, 2002. He was succeeded by Jack Sweeney. In 1994, the Chronicle switched to being a morning only paper. With the demise of the Houston Post on April 18 the next year, the Chronicle became Houston's sole major daily newspaper. On October 18, 2008, the paper endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States in the 2008 U. S. Presidential Election, the first Democrat to be endorsed by the newspaper since 1964, when it endorsed Texan Lyndon B. Johnson. It endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012, but endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020. Locally, the Chronicle endorsed Wendy Davis for governor in 2014, and Sylvester Turner for mayor in 2015. Additionally, the Chronicle initially endorsed Jeb Bush for the 2016 Republican primary, but did not endorse any other candidate after he dropped out.

In September 2018, then executive editor Nancy Barnes released a statement on the Chronicles website notifying readers for the first time that the paper's Austin bureau chief, Mike Ward, had resigned and was the subject of an internal investigation after questions were raised by a staff member over fabricating sources. Barnes opted not to disclose the source fabrication or Ward's resignation to Chronicle readers and the general public until she was contacted by reporters at other outlets pursuing a story about the Chronicles scandal—one full week after Ward had resigned. By the time Barnes informed the public about what would turn into the biggest journalism scandal of 2018, it had already become one of the worst kept secrets in Austin among the capitol press corps that writes about Texas politicians. The scandal had also become popular fodder among staffers who work at the capital. Within 45 minutes of being contacted by a freelance reporter for the Texas Observer, Barnes hastily issued a press release announcing that one of her reporters bad been caught making up sources over the course of several years. Barnes never explained why the Chronicle decided against being transparent to it readers immediately, instead of waiting for word to leak to the extent that other news outlets started planning stories. The sources being questioned in Ward's reporting were the product of "man on the street" interviews from a story dealing with rebuilding efforts following Hurricane Harvey. Barnes said Houston Chronicle researchers had problems finding a number of sources quoted in Ward's story, so the newspaper hired investigative journalist David Wood, a Pulitzer Prize winner. On November 8, 2018, one day before Barnes left for a position as senior vice president of news at National Public Radio, the Houston Chronicle released some of Wood's findings. The paper announced it was retracting a total of eight stories. Barnes later went on to tell Columbia Journalism Review that the widespread fabrication apparent in Ward's articles was unprecedented, in her experience: "I've been an editor a long time and I have never seen anything like this, period.". None of the Chronicles editors responsible for overseeing Ward's stories—including then managing editor Vernon Loeb—assumed any responsibility for the fact that one of their reporters had been cheating for years under their noses. In many instances over the course of years, Loeb worked directly with Ward and even rewrote his stories for final publication. The Austin American Statesman, where Ward worked as a reporter for 25 years covering the state's political class prior to joining the Houston Chronicle in 2014, also conducted an internal review of "his final years" of work at the paper. A copy of the original story that led to the investigation has been removed from the Chronicles website. But Austin based NPR affiliate KUT interviewed Ward for the radio in the days after the story ran and still has the story posted on its website, despite the fact that the sources used in Ward's reporting are suspected of being fake.

On July 21, 2014, the Chronicle announced that its Downtown employees were moving to the 610 Loop campus, at the intersection of the 610 Loop and U. S. Route 59/I 69 (Southwest Freeway). The facility, previously used as the Houston Post headquarters, will have a total of seven buildings with a total of over of space. The original building is a 1970s four story "New Brutalist" building. As of 2016 the building housed the Chronicle Production Department, The facility included a loading dock, office space, a press room, and production areas. It had ten stories above ground and three stories below ground. The printing presses used by the newspaper spanned three stories. The presses were two stories below ground and one above. In the Downtown facility, the presses there were decommissioned in the late 2000s. The newsroom within the facility had bull pen style offices with a few private cubicles and offices on the edges. The facility was connected to the downtown Houston tunnel system. Turner wrote that "in recent decades," 801 Texas Avenue "offered viewers an architectural visage of unadorned boxiness An accretion of five buildings made into one, it featured a maze of corridors, cul de sacs and steps that seemed to spring on strollers at the most unexpected times." Jesse H. Jones erected the first Chronicle building, a narrow and long structure clad in granite, on the corner of Travis Street and Texas Avenue in 1910. The second building, the Majestic Theater, was built west of the Chronicle building. The second building built by Jones opened in 1910. In 1918, the third Jones building, Milam Building, opened west of the theater. An annex was built on the north side of the main building in 1938 and gained a fifth floor in the 1960s. The fifth building was a production plant, built north of the original four buildings. They were joined together in a major renovation and modernisation project, wjhich was completed in the late 1960s. The site is now occupied by the Texas Tower.

2000: Houston's M. D. Anderson Cancer Center gave the Chronicle its Joseph T. Ainsworth Volunteer Community Award for making the newspaper available at a "greatly reduced rate" to the hospital and its patients. 2002: Holocaust Museum Houston awarded the Chronicle its "Guardian of the Human spirit" award. The presenter, Janis Goldstein, said the award was given "because the Houston Chronicle embraces the causes most dear to it with a depth and scope that goes well beyond what is expected." Also, that "the Chronicle gives of itself to build a community that will embrace tolerance, understanding, and diversity and will speak out against prejudice and unfairness of any kind."

1963: William Porterfield won an Ernie Pyle Award. 2003: James Howard Gibbons received third place in the "Hearst Distinguished Journalism Awards", an internal contest held between Hearst's newspapers, for his editorial piece "When Will the U. S. Liberate Texas?" Leon Hale, a long time columnist and author of 11 books, recently received the Lon Tinkle Award for Excellence Sustained Throughout a Career from the Texas Institute of Letters, of which Hale is a member. Jason Witmer won first place in the 48 Hour–Web category of the National Press Photographers Association's annual Best of Photojournalism in 2010 for his piece, "Too Manly for Quilt Show". Whitmer won second place in the News Feature–Web category for "Suddenly homeless in Houston".

In April 2004 the Houston Chronicle began carrying a Spanish language supplement, the entertainment magazine La Vibra. La Vibra caters to speakers of Spanish and bilingual English Spanish speakers, and is mainly distributed in Hispanic neighborhoods. In December 2004 the Chronicle acquired the Spanish language newspaper La Voz de Houston. Among them were claims of insensitivity against the newspaper and of giving an unduly large audience to a position characterized as being extremist. University of Texas president Larry Faulkner issued a response denouncing Jensen's as "a fountain of undiluted foolishness on issues of public policy", noting "[h]e is not speaking in the University's name and may not speak in its name."

The document was online for only an hour, but long enough to be viewed by some readers. Soon after, the Houston Review, a conservative newspaper published by students at the University of Houston, printed the memo's full text and an accompanying commentary that criticized the paper. Harris County District Attorney Rosenthal later dismissed the Chronicles complaint, finding it without merit on the grounds that the statute did not apply. Rosenthal's involvement in the probe itself came under fire by the Houston Press, which in editorials questioned whether Rosenthal was too close to TTM: from 2000 to 2004, Rosenthal accepted some $30,000 in donations from known TTM supporters.

In early 2004, Chronicle reporter Lucas Wall interviewed the family of Leroy Sandoval, a Marine from Houston who was killed in Iraq. After the article appeared, Sandoval's stepfather and sister called into Houston talk radio station KSEV and said that a sentence alleging "President Bush's failure to find weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq misrepresented their views on the war and President George W. Bush, that Wall had pressured them for a quotation that criticized Bush, and that the line alleging Bush's "failure" was included against the wishes of the family. A dispute ensued between KSEV radio show host/owner Dan Patrick and an assistant managing editor at the Chronicle. The incident prompted Patrick to join the call for a boycott of the paper. The story was also picked up by the local Houston television stations and, a week later, the O'Reilly Factor. Eventually, Chronicle publisher Jack Sweeney contacted the Sandoval family to apologize.

In January 2006 the Chronicle hired Richard Murray of the University of Houston to conduct an election survey in the district of U. S. Rep. Tom DeLay, in light of his 2005 indictment by District Attorney Ronnie Earle for alleged campaign money violations. The Chronicle said that its poll showed "severely eroded support for U. S. Rep Tom DeLay in his district, most notably among Republicans who have voted for him before." Former Texas Secretary of State Jack Rains contacted the Chronicle's James Howard Gibbons, alleging that the poll appeared to incorrectly count non Republican Primary voters in its sample. Rains also asserted that Murray had a conflict of interest in the poll, as Murray's son Keir was a political consultant working for Nick Lampson, DeLay's Democratic challenger in 2006.

The Houston Chronicle has faced significant challenges with its journalistic integrity. In 2020, the paper faced allegations of publishing articles without properly adhering to its own ethics policy, especially in regards to contacting subjects before publishing negative portrayals. There were also claims suggesting retaliation against individuals for not purchasing advertisements. This trust was further eroded in 2018 when the Chronicle retracted eight articles after it was revealed they were significantly based on sources whose existence could not be verified. An extensive review of the articles penned by Austin bureau chief Mike Ward showed that out of 275 individuals he quoted in various stories, 44% could not be located or confirmed. Beyond the retractions, an additional 64 of Ward's stories required corrections due to the inclusion of unverified sources, further tainting the paper's credibility. This was a result of an examination of a whopping 744 stories written by Ward since January 2014, with independent investigators unable to verify the existence of nearly half of the individuals he had quoted.

Some Houston Post articles had been made available in the archives of the Houston Chronicle website, but by 2005 they were removed. The Houston Chronicle online editor Mike Read said that the Houston Chronicle decided to remove Houston Post articles from the website after the 2001 United States Supreme Court New York Times Co. v. Tasini decision; the newspaper originally planned to filter articles not allowed by the decision and to post articles that were not prohibited by the decision. The Houston Chronicle decided not to post or re post any more Houston Post articles because of difficulties in complying with the New York Times Co. v. Tasini decision with the resources that were available to the newspaper. People interested in reading Houston Post articles may view them on microfilm. The Houston Public Library has the newspaper on microfilm from 1880 to 1995 and the Houston Post Index from 1976 to 1994. The 1880–1900 microfilm is in the Texas and Local History Department of the Julia Ideson Building, while 1900–1995 is in the Jesse H. Jones Building, the main building of the Central Library. In addition, the M. D. Anderson Library at the University of Houston has the Houston Post available on microfilm from 1880 to 1995, and the Houston Post Index from 1976 to 1979 and from 1987 to 1994.