Houston Press (Scripps Howard)

For the modern newspaper, see Houston Press.

The Houston Press was a Scripps Howard afternoon newspaper, founded in 1911, in Houston, Texas. Under the leadership of founding editor Paul C. Edwards (1911–16), Marcellus E. Foster, known as "Mefo" (1927–37), and George Carmack (1946–64), the newspaper developed a reputation for flashy stories about violence and sex and for exposés of political malfeasance. It ceased publication in 1964.

Notable former staff members included Walter Cronkite, who later became the CBS news anchor; Thomas Thompson, author of Hearts and Blood and Money; Donald Forst, later editor of Newsday and The Village Voice; Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and biographer Vance Trimble; columnists Sig Byrd ("The Stroller") and Carl Victor Little ("By The Way"); gossip columnist Maxine Mesinger; and television crusader Marvin Zindler, who once worked there as a photographer covering crime stories. Joseph Agris, who became Zindler's biographer, called the Houston Press "a paper that, by journalistic standards, had no standards at all" and Clyde Waddell who was a chief photographer in 1943.[1]

In 1963, the year before it closed, The Press had an average daily circulation (Monday-Saturday) of 90,000, and it employed 300 people. On March 20, 1964, editor Carmack and Business Manager Ray L. Powers announced that the paper had been sold to the rival Houston Chronicle for a price estimated as more than $4 million.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Gray, Lisa. "Exhibit looks at Houston through Marvin Zindler's lens." Houston Chronicle. March 20, 2011. Retrieved on May 18, 2011.
  2. ↑ Houston Press Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/eeh05), accessed July 11, 2011. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.


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