Digging up the old Houston Press

Slampo, one of Houston's top bloggers, writes about his finding of the original Houston Press daily (not the alternative weekly we have now). I've heard about this now defunct paper, but never knew much about it until now:

This was The Houston Press published by Scripps Howard chain, which we’d always heard offered a scrappier, livelier and more sensationalistic alternative to the somnambulant Chronicle and Post of the day. The one that employed Marvin Zindler and Garvin Berry and Maxine Messinger and many others who were in the throes of their journalistic dotage years later when we mistakenly got off the bus in Baghdad on the Bayou (thinking we were in Beaumont).

We weren’t familiar with the particulars of the Press’s demise, but come to find out it went out just on its rear end just like the Post did some 30-odd years later, at least according to the March 20, 1964 The Houston Press. “Houston Press is Sold, 52-Year History Ended by Chronicle Purchase” reads the six-column headline over the play story, which reported: “The Press today announced sale of its plant and certain other assets to The Houston Chronicle after successive years of operating at a loss.” That was it as far as the whys and wherefores of the transaction. The rest of the story dealt with the history of the paper, including the claim that the Press played a major role in implementation of a city manager form of government in Houston (later abandoned “in favor of the present arrangement”) and had “brought to light many instances of misconduct in public affairs.”

So I'm guessing this old Bayou City paper was more NY Post than the New York Times. I could use one of those around here again, but then I have been called "over the top" so of course I'd like a local newspaper like that. CONTACT: Leave me a Houston or Texas media news tip | COMMENT: Click to leave your thoughts on this post here