ANALYSIS OF THE FRONT PAGE OF THE HOUSTON POST AND HOUSTON CHRONICLE BEFORE AND AFTER THE PURCHASE OF THE HOUSTON POST BY TORONTO SUN PUBLISHING CO. By C. FELICE FUQUA Bachelor of Science Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Oklahoma 1983 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE May, 1986 Tk&si~_, l '1 <3'(p F Q, ANALYSIS OF THE FRONT PAGE OF THE AND HOUSTON CHRONICLE BEFORE AND AFTER THE PURCHASE OF THE HOUSTON POST BY TORONTO SUN PUBLISHING CO. Thesis Approved: Dean of the Graduate Collegec 1251246 ii PREFACE This is a content analysis of the front page news content of the Houston Post and the Houston Chronicle before and after the Post was bought by Toronto Sun Publishing Co. The study sought to determine if the change in ownership of the Post affected the newspaper's content, and if the news content of the Chronicle also had been affected, producing competition between two traditionally noncompetitive newspapers. Many persons made significant contributions to this paper. I would like to express special thanks to my thesis adviser, Dr. Walter J. Ward, director of graduate studies in mass communication at Oklahoma State_ University. I also express my appreciation to the other members of the thesis committee: Dr. Wi~liam R. Steng, professor of journalism and broadcasting, and Dr. Marlan D. Nelson, direc­ tor of the School of Journalism and Broadcasting. I very much enjoyed working under Dr. Nelson as his graduate assis assistant. I am also thankful for the encouragement of my family and the financial support from my grandfather; I hope he knows how much he has done for me. And for all his help and support through all this, I dedicate this project to my fiance, John. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. INTRODUCTION 1 Background . 1 The Growing Concentration of Ownership 16 Attempts to Curb Declining 22 II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE .... 31 Related News Stories 31 Hypotheses 37 III. METHODOLOGY 42 Selection and Sample of Newspapers 42 Content Analysis . 43 News Categories and Definitions . 43 Attention Scores 46 Testing of Hypotheses . 48 IV. FINDINGS . 51 Frequency Analysis 51 Attention Score Analysis 54 v. SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS . 63 Summary . 63 Conclusions . 65 Recommendations . 68 BIBLIOGRAPHY 70 APPENDIX. 74 iv LIST OF TABLES Table Pa:ge I. Audit Bureau of Circulation's Fas-Fax Totals for the Houston Post and Houston Chronicle . .--.--. • • • 16 II. Front-Page Story Frequencies by Categories of News: Houston Post and Houston Chronicle Before and After Purchase • • • • • . • • 51 III. Chi Square.Values for Differences in Number of Houston Post and Houston Chronicle Front-Page Stories Before and After Purchase: By Five News Categories • • • • • • • • • . • 52 IV. Frequencies of Front-Page Wire and Local Stories: Houston Post and Houston Chronicle Before and After Purchase • • • • . • • . • • 53 v. Mean Attention Scores: Newspaper-By- Categories-By-Period 55 VI. Spearman Rank-Order Correlation Coefficient Between Attention Scores and Items in Five Subject-Matter Categories • • . • • • • 56 VIII. Mean Attention Given to Front-Page Stories in Four News Categories by Both Newspapers Combined: Before and After Purchase of the the Houston Post • . • . • • • • • • . • • • 58 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Background The approaching end of the independent daily is not the result of a conspiracy among media barons. It is a largely impersonal process, operating in harmony with the rest of the American economy. In that sense, newspaper companies are no different from concerns that deal in oil, auto­ mobiles, pharmaceuticals, or underarm deodorants. The product happens to be different, for it con­ ditions daily the national political and social consciousness. But the organizations that provide the product operati with the same corporate motives as shoe factories. In this case, the end carne for the independently-owned Houston Post when it was purchased in the fall of 1983 by the Toronto Sun Publishing Corp. Sun Publishing owned three Canadian dailies, one weekly, operated a commercial printing division, a feature sale syndicate and a wire service and is 2 about 49 percent owned by Maclean Hunter, Ltd. Lieutant Governor William P. Hobby, president of the Post and its parent company, H&C Communications, Inc., an- nounced in July of 1983 that the Houston Post Co., of which it is the sole owner, was for sale because of "tax consider- 3 ations and the changing interests of shareholders." H&C Communications is owned by the Hobby and Catto families of 1 2 Houston, Texas and McLean, Virginia. The families continue to own and operate television stations in Houston, Nashville, Tucson, and Meridian, Mississippi, and a radio station in 4 Houston. The sale excluded certain Post assets, including its downtown printing plant and a part of its headquarters build- ing. The cost of the Post: $100 million plus the value of the working capital. The family-owned newspaper had working capital of some $30 million, putting the value of the tran­ S saction at about $130 million. An unnamed source at the Post said, "Considering that we're the second largest news- paper in the market and that we've been losing money for years, it's a stunning price we got." 6 Douglas Creighton, publisher of the Toronto Sun at that time, seemed equally pleased. "I'm not trying to sound like a cheerleader, but 7 I think it's the best deal we've ever done." Jessica Hobby Catto, daughter of Will and Oveta Hobby and now publisher of the Washington Journalism Review, said there just wasn't anyone in the next generation "who was the right one at the right time" to take over. So the family decided to concentrate on the broadcasting business. 8 Under the ownership of the Hobby family since 1939, the Post, which was founded in 1885, ha.d "enjoyed a reputation for balanced and, by low-key Houston standards, diligent local coverage; it won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative report­ ing in 1965. " 9 And despite the bipartisan political involvement of 3 family members, the paper rarely crusaded. The paper's last chairman, .William Hobby, was the Democratic governor of Texas from 19.17 to 192l, and his widow and successor, Oveta Culp Hobby, was, under President Eisenhower, the first Sec­ retary of Health, Education and Welfare. 1° For four days after the New York Times published the classified Pentagon Papers in 1971, the Post did not even mention the disclosures. The first reaction of the younger William Hobby, then execu- ti ve editor, was , "Aw, that' s no story! " When Hobby ran for Lieutenant Gove::nor in 1972, the Post published four one-page editorials supporting him during the Democratic primary, yet never gentioned his connection with the paper. 11 As the 17th largest newspaper in the United States at the time of the purchase, the Post operated in what has been one of the U.S.'s least competitive two-newspaper cities. 12 The morning newspaper, the Post, had had less impact in Hous- ton than its all-day competitor, the Houston Chronicle, which was established in 1901.13 As Peter Applebome, media writer and associate editor of the general interest magazine Texas Monthly, said, "The Chronicle has always played the power broker role in Houston, always tied itself to the donwntown business establishment. The Post, however, has always been seen as the paper with more of a heart." 14 When the Hobbys bought the Post from Jesse Jones, who, at the time, also owned the Chronicle, the two families were friends and lead- ing citizens of the community. They ran their newspapers in a "gentlemanly" fashion and the noncompetitive legacy first 4 began to erode only in 1979 when the Chronicle started pub- lishing a morning edition to compete directly with the Post. And the Chronicle is now owned by the nonprofit Houston Endowment and the paper must be sold by 1989, unless the laws change that now force its sale. 15 Since the Canada-based company has moved in on the scene, some believe a war between the two papers is possible and could be ugly. "The Chronicle could not restrain its glee that its new competition would come from foreign purveyors of the nouvelle penny press."16 They sent a reporter to To- ronto and the story ran on page one, beating out the Post on its own story. As Gregory Curtis of Texas Monthly said, "What followed was a glib and entertaining piece that in its emphasis on titillation, its one-sidedness, its self-serving purpose, and its utter delight in mocking a rival, was not 17 un l ~"k e many s t or~es· ~n· the Sun •.;tself. n Peter O'Sullivan, British-born editor-in-chief of the reborn Post, denounced the Chronicle report about the Toronto Sun as "the sleaziest journalism I have seen in-- a long time." 18 However, the Chronicle's executive managing editor for_news, Dan Cobb, said, "Im pretty well impressed with the content of the new Post. It's not nearly what I thought it would be. Competi­ tion may sharpen their paper, and ours, too." 19 O'Sullivan said, "The Houston papers before seemed to have sort of a mutual nonaggression pact. But if we are even moderately sue- cessful, the Chronicle will have to react. I think it is going to be fun." 20 5 The decision to buy the Postwas part o~ the Toronto Sun Publishing's plan to expand into the U.S. market. "When we started out, we said, 'Let's expand if it works.' Starting a new paper in a new place is fun." 21 The company considered the Washington, D.C.