(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...)

So far, Owls out-ink Ags, Coogs, Horns
Web has changed how football is covered

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

HOUSTON (Aug. 14) -- Since August 1 we have been tracking how the Houston Chronicle is reporting on all things football at the College and Professional level. We are tracking coverage activity for two professional teams and five collegiate programs that have some interest among the fans in the greater Houston marketplace.

It is difficult to determine trends at this point in the study but there are an interesting number of observations to note as we continue to push through pre-season activities. Well, what have we learned so far?

    The Chronicle’s love affair with the NFL and the Texans remains undiminished.

The NFL has garnered incredible market share and attention in a city like Houston. They have the ability to charge full price to a series of meaningless scrimmages. Radio stations fight to be inside the training bubble and interview players and coaches at every turn available. For their part, the Chronicle has at minimum a full page of Texan related articles in the paper each day. They usually have on front page story and then a full page inside devoted to the latest nuances spouting from Coach Kubiak and his players and coaches. A portion of the material provides insight, but there is some major scraping the bottom of the barrel for news. Some of the worst examples include: 

    Coach Kubiak gives his opinion about Barry Bonds pursuit of the home run record.

    Coach Kubiak told this player that he better show up in shape this season. He’s being a tough guy! (front page news!).

    You can convert your David Carr jersey to a Matt Schaub jersey with a stencil (provided in the paper)! There was even a stencil for the kid’s size jersey as a bonus! (Front page and back page of the Lifestyle section).

So far, the Texans have out inked the other programs in question on a cumulative   three-to-one basis. In other words almost 75 per cent of the space devoted to these six programs in pre-season has focused on the Houston Texans since August 1.

2: The Web has changed how football is covered.

Yikes! My initial goal was to peruse on-line to see if/how the Chronicle’s web site has changed and enhanced coverage. There is so much extra Texan material that I can not accurately keep up with it. I am still refining how to measure this aspect of coverage because increasingly media is going to on-line features to attract and keep audiences. The short story is that the on-line Chronicle continues to devote a ton of space to the Texans, including pictures, video and audio. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues. The Chronicle has the ability to measure what parts of their website are being accessed and read. For example, if no one is clinking on the daily video feeds from Texans camp, it is possible that they will be discontinued at some point.

3: How about them Cowboys?!?

The Chronicle has spent a relatively small amount of resources tracking the Cowboys so far this year. If it were not for the Hall of Fame interest in Michael Irvin, they would be almost completely off the chart. (I counted the hall of fame stories that feathured Irvin as "Cowboy Coverage". Cumulatively, there has been less than one full page of articles and pictures about "America’s Team" in the paper between August 1 and 10. (A page is defined as 123 column inches of material.) Further, there is little if any blog or internet space devoted to our northern pigskin neighbors on the Chron website.

4: The Universities: some surprises,

The Chronicle has given surprisingly little ink to the schools of the Big 12 since August 1. Part of the reason is that the Big 12 media orgy was in July and was reported on (at least in part) before the study began on August 1. The other reason is that the kickoff ("Texas tour") of the big schools will not occur until later in the month.

That being said, The University of Texas media clippings for the first 10 days dwelled largely on various police and legal predicaments of football and former football players. Their web coverage was a little stronger, with not only updates from Joseph Duarte, but Richard Justice doing a major mea culpa, admitting that he made fun of the discipline problems in Austin. He noted that he was ‘rightly" reprimanded by many inside and outside of the program who know that Mack Brown is a stand up guy and will always do the right thing….all in all, Richard spent 559 words on his blog apologizing to Longhorn nation on August 6. (http://blogs.chron.com/sportsjustice/archives/2007/08/) of all the college bloggers, Mr. Duarte seems to be the most technologically savvy, with several photos and frequent audio spots imbedded within his postings.

Texas A&M received so far the least amount of coverage in ink and in cyberspace. Granted, the full coverage of the Aggies will kick off on the 14^th of August, but Coach Fran has not garnered the amount of ink that he has in the past. The dust up verbal sparring between Coach Stoops and Coach Fran did find some space on Terrence Harris’s blog on August 1 and August 4, respectively (http://blogs.chron.com/aggies/2007/08/). It was interesting that neither remark made the actual print edition.

Like UT, coverage for TSU centered on the ongoing controversies and challenges for the program and alleged NCAA violations and financial problems. Further, regular coverage for the Tigers will be the duty of Ronnie Turner, who also has to cover a number of other Texas Colleges. His ability to focus on TSU will be difficult to say the least. If you believe in the adage that any coverage is good news…even if it is bad news, then TSU is getting far better coverage than in the past, at least so far. This is the surprise of the season.

The Cougars had a jump start for coverage but the first major story was on July 31, so it did not count for this analysis. Since that time they were handicapped by the fact that Michael Murphy, their regular beat reporter was on vacation. Consequently there was little blog or regular coverage for the team until he returned. The Chronicle sent only one reporter to New Orleans for Conference USA media days (MK Bower) to cover the entire conference. Despite the lack of full time reportage, the Cougars out inked both UT and A&M over the first 10 days.

Rice has really benefited from the Chronicle’s coverage over the first time period both in print and on line. The Owls have out inked everyone except the Texans and TSU. M.K. Bower has also used his blog to keep the readers up to date on training camp with his impressions and developments. The only area where Rice is behind the pack is the number of front page mentions. Virtually every program except the Owls and the Aggies has been featured as either an article or a "teaser" on the first page of the sports section.

5: Too soon to tell.

In summary, the Chronicle still has a very "pro" focus in pre-season. Coverage for the college programs have been augmented rather well through the use of blogs and other on-line features. The season is quite young so we will not make any predictions at this point. We’ll know more in the next few weeks.

Happy reading...

Gaylord Ravenal
Newspaper Sleuth

Our '04 Chronicle content analysis....

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