Improving the Product in Houston

William P. Steven, 55, is a newsman with some novel ideas. News, he insists, should be dangled before readers like fish bait. One good way to run a paper, he says, is to "print first and plan afterward." When Minneapolis' sister papers, the Star and Tribune, disagreed and fired him from the post of executive editor (TIME, Aug. 29, 1960), Steven saw no need to change his theories; he simply drew a list of the duller big-city dailies and went job hunting. He figured that among the papers he had picked out would be one that stood in urgent need of William P. Steven. As it turned out, he was right. By last week the newspaper of his choice, the Houston Chronicle, had changed from a steady, stodgy, second-place daily into the liveliest and the largest paper in town.

For the first time since 1958, the Chronicle's daily circulation has nosed past the competitive Post's, 221,040 to 220,698; its Sunday circulation of 263,260 has moved a comfortable 14,470 out in front. Some of these gains can be traced to the Chronicle's revitalized circulation department: the paper now hires younger carriers, for example, because small boys will take smaller routes, which makes for better service --and more sales. Some of the gains have been at the expense of the city's third paper, the Scripps-Howard Press, which has slipped 17,000 in circulation (to 89,000) since all three papers went to a dime in 1961. But the basic reason for the Chronicle's rise is that Bill Steven has improved the product.

Readers' Beefs. When he arrived in Houston three years ago, Steven dropped most of the newsroom wall partitions and installed his own desk out in the open. The move gave him an unimpeded look at his staff and the staff an unaccustomed look at the editor's shirtsleeves. In this same companionable spirit he sought to enfold the whole city. Steven has vowed to print the name of every Houstonian at some time or other, already runs 200,000 names a year in the Chronicle's "Life-beat," the city's only thorough press compilation of such vital statistics as births, deaths, marriages and divorces. A reader with a beef--even a Post reader--now calls the Chronicle's new "Watchem" department, which not only publishes grievances but does something about them. A chuckhole reported one morning is usually filled by the highway department that same afternoon--after a prodding phone call from the paper.

Editor Steven also added a Mexico City bureau and enlarged his bureau in the state capital at Austin, where the Chronicle's new "Longhorn Edition," trucked 160 mi. from Houston, now reaches readers before Austin's own Statesman. He put on a science editor to compete with the Post's two on the important and burgeoning manned-space-flight center in Houston. He sent staffers to cover stories all over the U.S. with the confident hand of a man who has operated for 30 years on the principle that "the advertising department makes the money, and I spend it." The Sunday photo supplement, which ran heavily to textbook-style text adorned by filter shots of the Alamo, turned into a sprightly portfolio of pictures international in scope.

Branch Roots. Over at the dethroned Post, President and Editor Oveta Gulp Hobby, Eisenhower's first Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, acknowledges the existence of a "friendly" rivalry, but appears unwilling to engage the Chronicle at any level. She may have to. Editor Steven has been promised continuing editorial freedom by Chronicle President John T. Jones Jr., nephew and heir of Jesse Jones, the Chronicle's longtime publisher and F.D.R.'s Secretary of Commerce. This is the sort of invigorating climate in which Bill Steven thrives. Said he, surveying the busy Chronicle newsroom, where his own enthusiasm has obviously taken root: "You cannot define talent. All you can do is build the greenhouse and see if it grows."

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