The Press: Last but Not Least

By most standards, among Houston’s three daily papers, Scripps-Howard’s evening Press rates last. With 102,590 in circulation, it is hopelessly behind the evening Chronicle (199,128) and the morning Post (215,063). Its 50-man editorial staff cannot compare with the Post’s 90 or the Chronicle’s no, and it suffers periodic, crippling talent raids not only by its wealthy rivals but by the other papers in the Scripps-Howard chain; the Press has lost three managing editors in the last ten years. All this might be expected to give the Press a real weak-sister inferiority complex. Not so: it happens to be the brashest, liveliest and most voluble paper in town.

Far more than the Post or the Chronicle, the Press fills the role of municipal watchdog—with a tendency to yip at everything from murder to pay raises for Houston city councilmen. Alarmed at Houston’s high murder rate, the Press labeled the city “Murdertown, U.S.A.,” campaigned so relentlessly for tighter gun registration laws that it drew scathing mail from nearly every quail-hunting and skeet-shooting type in Texas. Last January, impatient with the slow-moving police investigation into the slaying of Houston Housewife Wilma Selby, the Press rapped the police in an editorial and posted a reward for the killer. The chastened police promptly bestirred themselves, within ten days collared Mrs. Selby’s murderer (TIME, Aug. 15).

Editorial Boldness. Houstonians have learned to expect outspokenness from the Press, a paper that has little to lose and much to gain from piping up. The Press’s editorial vigor gains extra measure from the timidity of the Chronicle and the Post.

Established and prosperous, locked for years in a seesaw battle for economic first place, both papers hesitate to take stands on sensitive issues that, by offending any group, might jeopardize their positions.

On the South’s most sensitive issue, the race problem, neither paper has shown any inclination to copy the Press’s boldness. The Chronicle generally temporizes, the Post—run by onetime WAC commander Oveta Gulp Hobby—usually maintains editorial silence. This month, when Federal District Judge Ben C. Connally ordered the city’s laggard school board to step up the rate of public-school integration, only the Chronicle and the Press editorialized on his decision. The Chronicle was mild and vague: “It is hoped that all citizens will cooperate.” The Press said: “Judge Connally’s order is one with which we all can—and must—learn to live.”

Enthusiasm in a Vacuum. The Press often takes the lead in news enterprise. It was the first to expose kickbacks at Houston’s city-owned farmer’s market, the first to report police shakedowns on small businessmen, the first to note scandals in the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in Tex as, the first to spotlight a state pardon and parole board racket.

In the vacuum provided by his competitors, Press Editor George Carmack, 53, a 6-ft. 4-in. Tennessean who rose through the Scripps-Howard chain, moves with the enthusiasm of a newsman who would rather be forthright than first. Carmack’s small staff cannot hope to outproduce the Post and the Chronicle, and the paper frequently relies on sheer sensationalism. But with an independence of spirit rare in a chain newspaper, rarer still in Houston, the third-ranking Houston Press has clearly demonstrated that last is not necessarily least.