Chron.com Biography & Web Analysis

The Houston Chronicle is the most widely circulated daily newspaper in Houston, Texas. It is the third-largest newspaper in the United States by Sunday circulation, behind only The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, as of April 2016. The Chronicle became Houston's newspaper of record after purchasing long-time rival the Houston Post in 1995.

The Hearst Corporation, a privately held international corporate media conglomerate with $10 billion in revenue, owns and operates the Houston Chronicle, the largest daily newspaper in the United States. Nearly 2,000 people work for the daily, including about 300 journalists, editors, and photographers. The Houston Chronicle has offices in Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas. It claims that its website has 125 million monthly page visits.

The Houston Chronicle is the "newspaper of record" for the city. The Houston Chronicle is presently located at 4747 Southwest Freeway, when it was previously housed in the Houston Chronicle Building at 801 Texas Avenue in Downtown Houston.

Chron.com and houstonchronicle.com are its two websites. Chron.com offers breaking news, weather, traffic, pop culture, event listings, and city guides for free. Houstonchronicle.com, which was created in 2012 and is only available without purchasing a subscription, provides all of the analysis, reporting, columns, and other features found in the daily newspaper.

The Houston Chronicle's methods and policies have been shaped by the publishers' strong personalities from its inception. The best way to understand the history of the newspaper is to divide it into the eras of these people.

Marcellus E. Foster, a former reporter for the now-defunct Houston Post, launched the Houston Chronicle in 1901. Foster, who had been covering the Spindletop oil boom for the Post, invested in Spindletop and used $30 of the profit — equivalent to a week's earnings at the time — to help support the Chronicle.

The inaugural edition of the Chronicle was published on October 14, 1901, and it cost two cents per copy at a time when other newspapers cost five cents. The Chronicle had a circulation of 4,378 at the conclusion of its first month, nearly one tenth of Houston's population at the time. The paper bought and merged the Daily Herald within its first year of business.