(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 3...)

Coogs the big winner
in coverage increase
Pros still running away with column-inches game

Newspaper Sleuth says it's about time for Ken Hoffman to chime in

HOUSTON (Sept. 13) -- We have been measuring the level of coverage provided by the Houston Chronicle (both in news print and on-line) for selected college football programs of interest to people in the community.   At the end of the first month of coverage we have noted a few trends that are a little surprising and have really seen a significant difference that the World Wide Web is making in this arena.

Pro corner…

By now, there is almost no use in saying that pro football continues to receive the lion share of coverage here in Houston.   Pre season football, especially when a game features the Texans and the Cowboys was sure to generate plenty of ink.  The obligatory “Bum’s son is coaching the Cowboys” story surfaced a few days before the pre-season event and there was much ado about the Texans pre-season victory.  However, a few things have changed since the first 10 days of analysis.

1                     The Texans do not receive an entire page of news print (+) a day, like they did during the early part of the month.   It looks like the full page a day media frenzy was coinciding with two-a –day drills.

2                     The Texans continue to garner a place on the front page. With the exception of 3 days in August, they were positioned on page one, either with a feature story, or a pre or post game review.  In total they were front paged with an article or a ‘teaser” 40 times in 31 days…yes, you can have more than one front page feature a day…..

3                     We made it through August without the annual Ken Hoffman “Look at the goodies you can eat at the Reliant Stadium Concession Stand” article or the “I’m gonna be judging the best tail gate party at Reliant Stadium this year thanks to “Sponsor X”, so make sure you act like a fool and give me free food” column.  Be on the lookout for these epistles soon.

The Cowboys would have received little press if they had not been playing the Texans in pre-season.  It looks like the Chronicle will not be covering “America’s team” to the extent that they have in the past.

The College Game

The big winner for the month of August when comparing college coverage was the University of Houston.  For the month they out inked their big 12 competitors and their inner city rivals by a solid margin.  In total they received 34% of the college coverage for the month and totaled almost 5 and ½ pages of total coverage.  This is despite the fact that their regular beat writer Michael Murphy was on vacation for part of the measurement period. 

Who were the biggest losers in terms of coverage? As you might expect, TSU coverage diminished dramatically after the two big articles early about the program and the Athletic Director being on the hot seat.  Beat writer Ronnie Turner simply has too many schools to cover to keep churning out TSU information.  However, who would have thought that the Aggies would receive such limited coverage for the first month?  Aggie nation received just 13% of the college coverage of the teams we selected to review, just one percent more than TSU and much less than Rice, UT and U of H.  Wow!

The Net Effect

There were a few sterling examples of the dramatic changes that the internet is having with how the Chronicle (and others) reports the news.  It seems that the various bloggers have the ability to write a significant amount about the teams they are covering for the readership with far less editing and space constriction than on the paper itself.  This is both good and bad news…..  The good news is that individual bloggers/columnists can report on items that the editors otherwise deem not appropriate for the limited space in the newspaper.  The bad news is that print editors can increasingly not include news and information because they can be conscripted to the individual blog/on-line column.  There were a few excellent examples of these phenomena over the past 20 days.

• Michael Murphy “broke” the news and published an update on Jerrod Butler who had a cardiac arrest while working out in the weight room during August training session.  By the time the Chronicle got the story in print, it was old news.  Mr. Murphy also kept the Cougar readers updated on his medical status in his blog.  This was far more effective than waiting for official announcements from the school or waiting to see if anything would be in the paper the next day.
• Mr. Murphy also published a “glossary” of nicknames for the Cougar players. This is an article that would never reach the ink of newsprint but was perfect for his blog.  It was fun to read and brought the reader closer to the team.
• Mr. Murphy further published his prediction of wins and losses, followed by a very funny tangent of what Cougar fans “predict”, based on feedback from his predictions.  The resulting writing was clever and again tied the reader to the program.
• Moisekapenda (MK) Bower wrote more than any of his peers during the month, crafting more than 9,000 words in his blog about the Owls training camp.  His analyses were quite informative and much of it was appropriate for newsprint.  However, it was relegated to blog/on-line column status.  It is unknown if that decision was Mr. Bower’s or his editor.  Since the information was not in print, the reader must search on-line for the information.  I expect the casual reader will likely not go the Mr. Bower’s blog unless he has a reason to do so.  Also, in the past, the Owls released and posted numerous press releases on their practices, with some of the information reaching the newspapers and printed almost verbatim.  There was much less of this practice during August.   Consequently, the print coverage of the Owls diminished throughout the month.

• Both the UT and the A&M blog/on-line columns churned out information on their respective programs, with a little different twist.  Joseph Duarte (UT) continued to make better use of multi-media than the beat writers for Rice and TSU.  Terence Harris (A&M) had a couple of interview transcripts posted on his blog which would probably not have made it onto paper otherwise. All blogs had numerous hyperlinks. 

• Finally, the rosters for each team were updated on line sometime during the month of August.  As the month began, 2006 statistics and rosters were still on line.  By the end of the month, the Chronicle had the information updated. 

In summary

The first month has produced some real changes in college coverage, with a renewed emphasis on the University of Houston in print and a loss in coverage by Texas A&M.  All of the programs with the exception of TSU have significant presence by their respective beat reporters due to the opportunities presented through on-line blogs and columns.  We’ll see if the trends hold once college games move forward during September.  Until then, happy reading!

Happy reading...

Gaylord Ravenal
Newspaper Sleuth

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