- The News in Texas: Essays in Honor of the 125th Anniversary of the Texas Press Association
The News in Texas brings together twelve essays addressing Texas newspapers, the history of the Texas Press Association (TPA), and related topics. The occasion for the book's publication is the 125th anniversary of the Association's founding in Houston in 1880.
The quality of the twelve essays is uneven and the topics appear to be only loosely coordinated. Mike Cox's introductory item on the Texas Telegraph and Register, the [End Page 303] Republic's first newspaper, provides solid historical background. Patrick Cox's essay on the role of the press in the 1936 Texas Centennial is also well documented and a useful addition to the historiography of that watershed event. Another valuable contribution, by Tony Pederson, assesses the role of Texas newspapers in the passage and enforcement of open government legislation in Texas. Chapters on technology, community newspapers, and women's roles in small town newspapers seem to be essays in search of a theme.
Much of the remainder of the 163-page volume is taken up with lists (TPA Presidents, TPA convention speakers, and Texas winners of the Pulitzer Prize) and self-laudatory pieces about the Association. One wonders whether the list of TPA convention speakers generally reflects the changing clout of newspapers in Texas politics. In 1974, the TPA convention attracted the governor, both U.S. Senators, the speaker of the Texas House, and the attorney general. In 2003, the featured speaker was a former astronaut.
The News in Texas is retrospective in content, but it has little to say about two obvious topics for any work in honor of a 125-year-old Texas media organization: what, if anything, has distinguished Texas newspapers from those of other states and regions?; and what does the future hold in store for Texas newspapers? While there have been significant high points in modern Texas journalism (exposing the Billie Sol Estes and Sharpstown scandals, and confronting persistent racism), the book does little to dispel Larry McMurtry's 1968 characterization of the state's daily press as journalistically unremarkable and subservient to dominant business interests (In a Narrow Grave, Encino Press, 1968). With newspaper circulation declining in counterpoint to the rise of internet news and 24-hour broadcast media, one wonders what there will be to commemorate on the occasion of the Texas Press Association's 150th anniversary.