Biographical Text
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas.
Founded on October 14, 1901, this publication had and still covers a plethora of news categories, such as business, entertainment, politics, opinion pieces, etc.
The founder, Marcellus E. Foster, used the $30 worth of his investment in the Spindletop oil boost that his former work, the Houston Post wrote about that same year. Foster used this money to fund the Houston Chronicle.
The papers popularity grew from 7,000 initial circulations in 1901 into over 75, 000 on weekdays and 85, 000 Sundays by the year 1926.
That same year, entrepreneur Jesse H. Jones became the Chronicle's sole owner after negotiating the payout with Foster. He promised to pay Foster $300,000, which was even more than the debt we owed for starting the publication. In addition to that sum, Jones swore to pay him $20, 000 a year as the paper's editor and $6,000 for his continued writing of the Chronicle's daily front-page column, 'MEFO'. Foster, of course, agreed.
Eleven years later in 1937, Jones passed ownership of the Houston Chronicle to the Houston Endowment Inc. From then on into the 1980's, the paper was publishing on conservative view points.
As recently as 2018, the Houston Chronicle had a source fabrication scandal based on the executive editor at the time, Nancy Barnes' statement that the papers' Austin bureau chief, Mike Ward, resigned and was under investigation.
Ward wrote a story pertaining to rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Harvey. He included "man-on-the-street" interviews, but Barnes said that the Chronicle's researchers were not finding the sources from Ward's story easily. Pulitzer Prize recipient and investigate journalist David Wood was assigned to discover what was wrong. The Chronicle, discovering Ward's perjury and made up stories, had to remove eight stories.
Besides this mishap, the Houston Chronicle still stands as Texas' most read daily paper.