The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA. As of March 2008, it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. With the demise of its long-time rival the Houston Post, its nearest major competitors are located in Dallas-Fort Worth.

The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily paper owned and operated by the Hearst Corporation, a multinational corporate media conglomerate with $4 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. Its web site averages more than 75 million page views per month.

On October 19th, 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, in which it endorsed Texan favorite son Lyndon B. Johnson.

History

1901: Marcellus E. Foster

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 found the Chronicle.

The Chronicle's 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.

Goodfellows

In 1911, City Editor George Kepple started Goodfellows. On a Christmas Eve in 1911, Kepple passed a hat among the Chronicle's 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 city-wide program that provides needy children between the ages of 2 and 10 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.

1926: Jesse H. Jones

In 1926, Jesse H. Jones became the sole owner of the paper. In 1968, the Chronicle set a Texas newspaper circulation record. In 1981, the business pages — which up until then had been combined with sports — became its own section of the newspaper.

1987: Hearst

On May 1, 1987, the Hearst Corporation purchased the Houston Chronicle for $415 Million.