The first Texas news barons / Patrick Cox.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cox, Patrick L., 1952-

Series:

Focus on American history series.

Focus on American history series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Press--Texas--History--19th century.

Press.

Press--Texas--History--20th century.

American newspapers--Texas--History--19th century.

American newspapers.

American newspapers--Texas--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (289 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Newspaper publishers played a crucial role in transforming Texas into a modern state. By promoting expanded industrialization and urbanization, as well as a more modern image of Texas as a southwestern, rather than southern, state, news barons in the early decades of the twentieth century laid the groundwork for the enormous economic growth and social changes that followed World War II. Yet their contribution to the modernization of Texas is largely unrecognized. This book investigates how newspaper owners such as A. H. Belo and George B. Dealey of the Dallas Morning News, Edwin Kiest of the Dallas Times Herald, William P. Hobby and Oveta Culp Hobby of the Houston Post, Jesse H. Jones and Marcellus Foster of the Houston Chronicle, and Amon G. Carter Sr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram paved the way for the modern state of Texas. Patrick Cox explores how these news barons identified the needs of the state and set out to attract the private investors and public funding that would boost the state's civic and military infrastructure, oil and gas industries, real estate market, and agricultural production. He shows how newspaper owners used events such as the Texas Centennial to promote tourism and create a uniquely Texan identity for the state. To balance the record, Cox also demonstrates that the news barons downplayed the interests of significant groups of Texans, including minorities, the poor and underemployed, union members, and a majority of women.

Contents:

Texas newspapers and modernization

The evolution of the Texas press

Expansion and consolidation : individual publishers

"An enemy closer to us than any European power"

The forces of traditionalism and the challenge from the invisible empire

Texas newspapers, the crash of 1929, and the Great Depression

Newspapers and the 1936 Texas centennial.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-264) and index.

ISBN:

0-292-79663-3

OCLC:

648315005