When The Houston Post was shut down in April of last year, Tony Pederson, managing editor of the surviving Houston Chronicle, took dozens of calls from concerned readers of his former rival, and most were about one thing.
"Comics, by a landslide," Pederson said. "People called and said, `I know you can't pick up all of the Post's comics, so here's my list.' It was pretty humbling."Now, 20 months later, The Chronicle prints more comics than most other dailies as it settles in as the last paper standing in a market that a generation ago had three dailies scratching and fighting for news. It also prints a lot more papers: The Chronicle's circulation has grown from 414,000, when The Post printed its last issue, to 545,000 in September, the most recent data available. Advertising revenues, freed from competition, have also shot up since The Chronicle acquired The Post for its assets and subscription lists and unceremoniously closed it. The Post's demise clearly illustrates the benefits of eliminating the competition.
But if The Chronicle and its parent company, the Hearst Corp., have won, what of the city of Houston and surrounding Harris County? The impact of losing newspaper competition has been felt in many towns lately, after all, as the number of two-paper markets has dwindled to fewer than a dozen.
In Houston, the meaning of monopoly came sharp and fast to advertisers, said David Spiers, general manager of Don McGill Audi-Porsche, located in Southwest Houston. "I think a one-newspaper town is terrible," Spiers said. "The Chronicle's rates have gone up a couple of times since The Post stopped, and they say they're going up again, and it just puts a business that has to advertise at their mercy."
The Chronicle has put through several advertising rate increases since April 1995. A weekday display ad one inch deep and one column wide went for $252.64 in January 1995, before The Post stopped publishing. It now costs $409, according to Standard Rates and Data Services, an ad rate clearinghouse. Those higher rates provided advertisers with exposure to 132,000 additional readers, but Spiers misses the competition. "It's unbelievable that the fourth-biggest city in the nation can't support two newspapers," he said.
The Forest Park Westheimer Funeral Home and Cemetery does not advertise in The Chronicle, but Clayton Sproul, the general manager, said his clients felt the effects of increasing rates in the paid obituaries they bought.
"We saw a drastic change within about 90 days of when The Post quit, and the cost has gone from about $5 a line to almost $8," Sproul said. "Of course our clients dislike it, and we help them as much as we can to knock out `as' and `thes' and `ands.' "
Advertising rates can be measured, but the editorial impact on Houston from The Post's fall is a matter of opinion. Still, some readers say that, although The Chronicle has published several am-bi-tious investigative ventures from around the globe, the paper's local news coverage has been slimmer than before.
"When The Post was alive they had two full-time reporters in City Hall from early in the morning until late at night, scratching and digging and keeping their notes close to the vests and making my life miserable," said Paul Mabry, who was the City Hall press secretary for the former mayor, Kathryn Whitmire, until 1994. "The Chronicle did a pretty good job of matching them, and we had a lot of very aggressive local coverage."
These days, the city hall news room is "a ghost town," added Mabry, a former reporter. "You don't have that buzz in the newsroom anymore because the competition isn't there, and that affects the electronic media because, of course, they are notoriously lazy and feed off the print people. So when the print reporters aren't around the TV people don't come around either, because there's nobody to crib off of."
The Chronicle has yet to become a strong local paper, said Ted Stanton, a professor of journalism at the University of Houston.
"I think the people at The Chronicle have tried to become more locally engaged," said Stanton, who receives funding for several classroom projects from The Chronicle. "But I'm not ready to call them fearless."