Bright New Eyes for Texas

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Canadian owners jazz up a cautious, folksy daily

When a newspaper is sold by local owners to out-of-towners, the staff, and for that matter the readers, often frets that the new management will give an old friend a gaudy new face. That worry rippled through Houston in October after the family of Texas Lieutenant Governor William Hobby sold the city's oldest (founded 1885) daily, the cautious, folksy Post (circ. 402,000), for $100 million to perhaps the ultimate absentees: Canadians. The buyer, the Toronto Sun Publishing Corp., has three Canadian dailies that specialize in short, sensational stories and photos of bare-chested men and barely dressed women. The Houston Chronicle (circ. 459,000), perhaps shaken by the prospect of a rivalry in what has been one of the U.S.'s least competitive two-newspaper cities, sent a reporter to Toronto to survey the Canadian group's flagship Sun. His report on what might come to Texas ran under the headline A SHOCKING CHANGE?

The change in the Post has taken effect this month, and while hardly shocking, it is surely dramatic. Visually, the revamped paper is a kaleidoscope of brightly inked boxes, outsize color photos and bold black headlines; editorially, it is terse and feisty, especially in its newly argumentative opinion pages. To the potential disappointment of some readers, however, there will be no cheesecake--or beefcake. Says British-born Editor in Chief Peter O'Sullivan, 34: "The 'Sunshine Girl' has a certain, if you will pardon the expression, grab appeal for the Sun, a tabloid dependent on street sales. But the Houston Post is a different kind of paper, and we do not want to alienate the circulation that we paid for." Still, the paper will be raffish: the owners seek not so much to cut into the Chronicle's circulation as to catch the eyes of people who do not now read a daily newspaper. Says Director of Marketing Marvin Naftolin: "We are looking for the young adult. The papers here have not been exciting or interesting enough to attract them."

The new paper is a tabloid in spirit, though not in actual size: it emphasizes crime, sex, sports and weather, and devotes about half of each front page to local news. Combat in the Middle East got prominent play last week, but the paper was almost devoid of serious stories about politics or Government in Washington, and the results of Japan's elections were reported back on page 10. The business section depends heavily on wire-service copy and emphasizes consumers rather than industry and finance; the feature section resembles a traditional women's page, with stories about office parties, bargain clothes and Christmas gifts to hairdressers, rather than the issue-oriented life-style articles that appear in many big-city papers.

The transplanted Canadians concede that they are still learning the local mentality. A restyled regional weather map, for example, had to be quickly scrapped in favor of a national one. Explains O'Sullivan: "One of the attractions of living here is gloating about how all your friends up North are freezing." To help ease the transition, the owners elevated Columnist Lynn Ashby, who is probably Houston's best-known newspaperman, to the new post of editor, overseeing the opinion pages. Says Ashby: "The city has badly needed a public discussion of issues. I do not ask people to agree with us, but I want us to be the first thing they pick up in the morning." His program: expanded political coverage, more guest-column slots for ordinary citizens, and "taking some of the cynicism and acidity" out of one of the old paper's anomalous, shrill features, the staff-written replies to letters to the editor.

Under the ownership of the Hobby family since 1930, the Post had enjoyed a reputation for balanced and, by low-key Houston standards, diligent local coverage; it won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1965. Yet despite the bi-partisan political involvement of family members--including the paper's late chairman, William Hobby, who was Democratic Governor of Texas from 1917 to 1921, and his widow and successor Oveta Gulp Hobby, who was, under President Eisenhower, the first Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare--the paper rarely crusaded. For four days after the New York Times published the classified Pentagon papers in 1971, the Post did not even mention the disclosures. The initial reaction of the younger William Hobby, then executive editor: "Aw, that's no story." When Hobby ran for Lieutenant Governor in 1972, the Post published four Page One editorials supporting him during the Democratic primary, yet never mentioned his connection with the paper.

Predictably, the staff is divided about the new look. Some describe the Post as an imitator of the Gannett Co.'s national daily, USA Today. In its emphasis on crime and catastrophe, the Post also resembles the British popular dailies on which the Toronto Sun was modeled. Complains one Post veteran: "It looks like a newspaper in a clown suit." Others share the view of a reporter who says, "It is like having somebody let fresh air into a stale room--we needed it, but some people find it a little cold." Advertisers too are hesitant. David Huskey, senior vice president of marketing and sales promotion at Joske's, a department-store chain, says, "I do not buy advertising based on graphics and color. We are going to have to wait a few months to see how the changes have affected circulation and demographics."

Houston residents are also waiting to see whether the new Post and the reawakened Chronicle will become more vigorously competitive. A war between them could be ugly: O'Sullivan denounces the Chronicle report about the Toronto Sun as "the sleaziest journalism I have seen in a long time." On the other hand, the result could resemble what happened in Dallas, 250 miles to the north, where a stepped-up rivalry since the mid-'70s has led both the Times Herald and the Morning News to open new bureaus, recruit top-rank reporters and expand coverage, especially of international and economic news. The Houston Chronicle's executive managing editor-news, Dan Cobb, says, "I'm pretty well impressed with the content of the new Post. It's not nearly what I thought it would be. Competition may sharpen their paper and ours too." Says Post Editor O'Sullivan: "The Houston papers before seemed to have sort of a mutual nonaggression pact. But if we are even moderately successful, the Chronicle will have to react. I think it is going to be fun."

--By William A. Henry III. Reported by David S. Jackson/Houston

With reporting by David S. Jackson/Houston