(Editor's note:  After a two-year hiatus, our intrepid Newspaper Sleuth, Gaylord Ravenal, returns to take another look at Houston Chronicle coverage of local sports teams. Here's his report number 1...)

Time to test the waters
again on Chron coverage

Chron's affection for lovable loser Texans can't escape Newspaper Sleuth's  detection

HOUSTON (Aug. 4) -- After much thought, we have decided to revisit how Houston's only daily newspaper covers the various college and professional football programs with some visability in the Houston marketplace.

The first study was completed two years ago -- but much has changed in Houston since that time, and we wanted to see how the Chronicle editors have responded to those changes.

The study will be conducted as follows:

Time frame: August 1 through the Sunday after the last regular season game for the college teams.

Teams followed: Professional: Houston Texans, Dallas Cowboys

College: University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, University of Houston, Texas Southern University, Rice University

Media Measured: Houston Chronicle Newspaper, www.chron.com

Metrics: Column inches (newspaper), word count for additional features not found in the newspaper, like blogs (website). Also Includes articles, pictures, standings, statistics for newspaper; # of pictures and statistical tables for web.

Results will be tabulated daily but updates displayed weekly (hopefully).

Articles about the opponents of the team for that week will be counted. When one team plays another team being reviewed, (For example, when Texas plays Rice) the articles that week will count for both teams.

Chron on South Beach diet?

What has changed since 2005? Plenty!    Since our first analysis....

The Houston Chronicle seems to have gone on a diet. There seems to be less pages in the newspaper, probably reflecting a loss of advertisement revenue. This could mean that there is less space that they can allocate to sports as the company continues to look for ways to cut costs and boost revenues.

The Chronicle has also seems to have lost Mickey Herskowitz as a regular contributor. Mickey was their most literate sports writer/columnist, but it could be argued that he also spent an inordinate amount of time on Darrell Royal and Bear Bryant stories.

On the other hand, the Chronicle has devoted much more resources to their website chron.com. Over he past year or so, there have been a number of items that have appeared on line that are unavailable in print. This has benefited a number of writers like Mike Murphy and MK Bower, beat reporters for the Cougars and Owls, respectively.

Coach Fran has gone from savior status/honeymoon to Almost Coach Gone at Texas A&M. Grumblings in College Station were momentarily silenced when the Aggie's rose up and beat the Longhorns last November, but the unending losses to Texas Tech and the near losses to Oklahoma State and Army did not sit well with Aggie Alumni, s'cuse me, Former Students. A large portion of the current student population of 45,000 comes from the Houston area.

The University of Houston became Conference USA Football Champions-- and billboards around town are highlighting  that fact as they push for season ticket sales. It will be interesting to see if their increased success leads to increased media coverage.

Last season, the U of H focused a great deal of public relations resources on touting Kevin Kolb as a Heisman Trophy Candidate. They also benefited from a conference championship game in Houston at Robertson stadium. The demographic makeup of the 34,000 students on campus at U of H mirror the diverse makeup of the city.

Owls went bowling -- so what's the effect?

Rice went bowling for the first time since the early 1960's after their most successful season in several years. Over the past two years they have gone through two head coaches and coaching staffs, a new athletic director, and outsourced much of their marketing department.

Further, they have a nationally recognized All-American candidate and pre-season Conference USA offensive player of the year in Jarett Dillard. JD is only a few games away from possibly breaking an NCAA consecutive touchdown catch record.

The loss of Coach Graham and Coach Applewhite from the Owls staff may be reflected in less coverage about the team as the former was very media and public relations savvy and the later captured many media and Longhorn hearts as the ultimate overachiever. With less than 3,000 undergraduate students on campus it will be interesting to see if Rice continues to struggle to get mainstream media attention, especially if they do not continue to improve. One thing in their favor is the number of former Southwest Conference foes on their schedule this year (5: Texas Tech, Baylor, Texas, SMU, U of H)

Texas Southern has received significant negative media coverage due to the issues surrounding their former president and board clashes with the Governor during the legislative session. On the field, TSU won three games whole losing eight.

Coach Steve Wilson begins his 4th season at TSU. Two years ago, media coverage for this team was virtually invisible. He lost assistant coach and former Houston Oiler Bubba McDowell to Coach Briles Cougar staff. In a town that has a 17 per cent African American population, will the Chronicle focus significant resources on a football team at a historically black college with an enrollment of close to 10,000 students?

Now four sports talk options on AM radio

Sports Talk radio has expanded radically in Houston. There are no less than four stations aiming at the Sports junkie on a full-time basis and other stations that focus a part of their day on sports talk. It will be interesting to see if the market can support all of these stations over the long term. Television and stations have also beefed up their web sites trying to get readers and listeners to go on line with them; this is further direct competition to the Houston Chronicle and Chron.com.

Two years ago the Astros' were making a run at the World Series. This garnered much coverage by writers and columnists. The mediocre record of the team in 2007 could mean that less time is devoted to baseball during the fall, since there may not be a locally influenced pennant race.

Houston now has a professional soccer team to compete for media coverage with football. The Houston Dynamo have made a serious impact on the 33 per cent Hispanic and international population in Houston. The Chronicle now routinely devotes a full page to soccer, something that was not on their radar two years ago. The success of soccer may mean declining space for football.

The Houston Texans have entered into year two of their rebuilding phase with former Aggie Gary Kubiak. Gone is the previous administrative and coaching staff, and Houston fans fell out of love with former quarterback David Carr. Two years ago there were full page articles and giant pictures of David getting a haircut. Last year it was the unforgivable sin of not drafting Reggie or Vince. This year we have a new field general and optimism reigns at training camp.

The Texans continue to sell their brand on everything in sight. Anyone want to buy the "official toaster" of the Houston Texans? The NFL is by far the most media savvy sports league and all media outlets continue to salivate over each other for a piece of the action.

'Horns gave up NC trophy, but are still the 500-pound gorilla

The Texas Longhorns are no longer the national champions of college football, but they have positioned themselves as the goliath of football in Texas. There are no longer the calls for Mack Brown to leave and he is has shed the moniker of not being able to win the big ones (Oklahoma, BCS bowls), at least for the moment. Like Texas A&M, a large number of the 49,700 students in Austin and a huge alumni base are Houstonians.

Why look at the Dallas Cowboys? Well, years ago they astutely marketed their team nationally as "America's team" and also made overtures to the Houston Market when the NFL and the city was between the Oilers and the Texans. Now, Cowboy fans bitch about the lack of coverage while Texan fans bellow that the Cowboys get far more ink than they should. We thought we would look at the facts.

Other things to note:   Both Conference USA and the Big 12 media days occurred before August 1 so some coverage will be missed for this analysis. NFL training camps also opened up before August 1 so that coverage is being missed as well.

I hope you enjoy the analysis and write-ups during the season. The complexities of the web may make some of the research too difficult and time consuming, but I will do my best to persevere.

Happy reading!

Gaylord Ravenal
Newspaper Sleuth

Our '04 Chronicle content analysis....