Four industry giants to join Texas Newspaper Hall of Fame

AUSTIN — Four newspaper legends will be inducted into the Texas Newspaper Hall of Fame on June 21 during the Texas Press Association convention in College Station.

Inductees include Libby Averyt, a crusading reporter who stood fast against legal oppression and went on to become the Corpus Christi Caller-Times’ first female publisher; the late Joe T. Cook, a fourth-generation newspaperman who served with distinction as a journalist and in countless community and industry leadership roles; the late Carl Estes, who used his newspapers, business skills and persuasiveness to lead Longview in its evolution from small town to industrial powerhouse; and the late Richard J.V. Johnson, who led the Houston Chronicle to become one of the nation’s largest newspapers and helped grow the Houston Medical Center into the most respected large medical complex in the world.

“Each of these four newspaper industry giants used their considerable talents, boundless energy and determination in making their newspapers strong and highly respected in their community,” said Greg Shrader, chairman of the Texas Newspaper Foundation, which selects hall of fame inductees. “The strength of the newspapers and their publishers had a great deal to do with the tremendous success their cities and their regions have enjoyed.”

The inductees will be honored during an awards luncheon at 11:45 a.m. Friday, June 21, at the Texas Press Association convention at the Hilton College Station.

Established in 1974, the non-profit Texas Newspaper Foundation exists to honor the past, protect the present and build the future of journalism in general and newspapers in particular as a vibrant force in democratic society.

The foundation’s work includes:

• Continuing education for mid-career journalists offered through the Texas Center for Community Journalism at Tarleton State University. These workshops and seminars are provided at no cost to the participants.

• Recognition of the profession’s visionaries and community builders through the Texas Newspaper Hall of Fame.

• Preserving the stories of Texas journalists through the Texas Newspaper Oral History project at the The University of Texas at Austin.

• Improving the public’s understanding of the importance of newspapers to a flourishing democracy.

Founded in 1880, the Texas Press Association is one of the nation’s oldest and largest newspaper trade associations, representing more than 300 newspapers across the state. For more information, contact Mike Hodges at mhodges@texaspress.com.

Below are profiles of this year’s inductees.

LIBBY AVERYT

If you study the criteria for induction into the Texas Newspaper Hall of Fame, Libby Averyt checks all the boxes:

• Outstanding contributions to Texas newspaper journalism;

• Extraordinary contribution to her community, region, the state and nation through newspaper journalism;

• Advancing the legacy of a free and responsible press, and

• Inspiring others to improve the quality of the profession of journalism.

And she did it all at one newspaper.

Libby Averyt spent her entire 30-plus year journalism career at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. She started on the news side, went to the advertising side and ended her career as president of the newspaper.

During her tenure, she established herself as a capable and courageous reporter and editor, an energetic and innovative revenue producer and the respected chief executive of one of Texas’ most-rewarded newspapers. At the same time, she was active as a civic leader and volunteer.

She served on the boards of a number of organizations, including the Texas State Aquarium, Charlie’s Place Recovery Center, Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce and United Way of the Coastal Bend, of which she is now president and CEO. She also currently serves as a member of the Del Mar College Board of Regents.

A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Averyt started her newspaper career in 1986 at the Caller-Times covering the night police beat.

As a courts reporter in 1990, she drew national attention after refusing to answer questions from authorities about unpublished material from interviews with capital murder suspect Jermarr Arnold. She was held in contempt of court and spent the weekend in a jail cell.

She was a highly engaged member of the South Texas Press Association, Texas Gulf Coast Press Association,  Texas Press Association and National Newspaper Association

Her journalistic commitment was recognized with the Edward Willis Scripps Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment.

In her more than 20 years in the news department, Averyt moved up in the ranks from rookie reporter to executive editor. While heading the newsroom, she led the newspaper to recognition five times as Newspaper of the Year along with numerous other awards from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors association.

She also served a stint as the online general manager and vice president, later becoming vice president of advertising.

On Jan. 1, 2014, Averyt made history as the first woman to be named the newspaper’s publisher and went on to lead the newspaper through several changes of ownership.

Under Gannett ownership, in addition to serving as president of the Caller-Times, she oversaw Gannett’s news operations in Abilene, San Angelo and Wichita Falls.

Throughout all her roles in the newspaper industry, Averyt exemplified all the best of newspaper journalism and did so with passion.

JOE T. COOK

Joe T. Cook made quite a name for himself during his career as a fourth-generation newspaperman.

Cook, who died  in 2001 at his Corpus Christi home at age 91, was the oldest living Texas Press Association past president, having led the association from 1945-46 while he was editor and publisher of The Mission Times.

Cook also was the oldest living editor of The Daily Texan, a post he held in 1931-32 at the University of Texas, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1932.

He was the only National Newspaper Association president to also serve as president of two state press associations — TPA and Mississippi Press Association from 1971-72.

In 1949-50, at age 39, he became the youngest publisher/editor to serve as NNA president when the association was called the National Editorial Association.

Cook also served as president of South Texas Press Association in 1937-38.

Cook was born Dec. 9, 1909 in Weatherford. His father, Thomas Milton Cook, ran the Albany News and the Weatherford Democrat, and his grandfather Samuel F. Cook was an early editor and owner of the Albany newspaper. His great grandfather Thomas Cook published a religious newspaper in Arkansas and was a pioneer editor of the newspaper in Huntsville, Ind.

He graduated in 1932 from UT and married his childhood sweetheart, Dorothy McCanlies, a music major at Baylor University.

Cook learned his newspapering from the backshop up, beginning as a carrier boy for the Eastland Daily Oil Belt News, where he also worked as an apprentice printer and Linotype operator. He worked briefly for the Eastland Record and went to the Mission Times in 1932 as advertising manager. He became editor/manager at age 24.

After 26 years of service in Mission, where he eventually became publisher/general manager, Cook left in 1958 after purchasing the Winston County Journal in Louisville, Miss. He finished his career there as owner, publisher and editor, then retired in 1994 and returned to Texas to live in Corpus Christi.

Cook won numerous awards during his career, including the Herrick Editorial Award from NEA, the association’s highest honor for non-metropolitan newspapers, and national general excellence awards from NEA. He wrote an editorial that placed first in its division in the TPA contest and earned the Phi Beta Kappa key award at UT.

While in Mission, Cook helped the newspaper grow form an eight-page weekly with three employees to a 16-18 page weekly with 30 employees. It went from a one-Linotype shop to a large plant with Goss press that handled jobs from a spacious new building.

His newspaper carried Voltaire’s quotation “I wholly disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

“This isn’t exactly what one would label a ‘policy,’” Cook once wrote in his paper. “But it is a statement of our belief in freedom to write and speak what one pleases within the bounds of decency and truth.”

As TPA president his columns in the Texas Press Messenger advocated the advantages of a national unified advertising program to benefit weeklies.

“For too many years weeklies have operated in a circumscribed sphere, taking what national advertising that might be sent to them, and never taking the time or money to recruit more,” Cook wrote in 1945.

He also campaigned for expansion of the journalism school at UT and pushed to get more papers to use the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

CARL LEWIS ESTES (1896-1967)

Newspaper publisher Carl Lewis Estes was both a newspaper publisher and an economic development dynamo, and Longview continues to reap the benefits of his work more than 50 years after his death. 

Estes was born in New Market,Tennessee. He attended the public schools of Commerce and Denison, then East Texas State Teachers College (now East Texas State University). He served in the cavalry in World War I and was a lieutenant commander in the navy during World War II. 

As editor of his college newspaper, he became interested in journalism as a career, and he subsequently worked for the Commerce Journal, the Denison Herald, and the Tyler Courier-Times.

As a foreign correspondent for the International News Service, Estes spent 1927 in Paris and Stockholm. Back in Texas, he founded the Tyler Telegraph in 1930 and four years later bought the Longview Daily News and the Longview Morning Journal. In Longview he also owned and published two weekly newspapers, the Longview Lens and the Greggtonian. During the 1930s Estes was publisher of the Van Free Press, the Panola Watchman, East Texas Oil Magazine (later the Texas Oil Journal), East Texas Dairyman, the Wood County Record, and the Mineola Monitor.

 He was an originator of the Texas Rose Festival at Tyler, originator and first president of the East Texas Land and Royalty Owners Association, vice president and secretary of the Van Oil Royalty Association, and an originator of the East Texas Dairy and Milk Products Association.

Upon returning to Longview after World War II, he was effective in helping persuade a number of major industries to locate plants in the Longview area. As chairman of the Sabine Watershed Association, he was active in the development of the water resources of East Texas for industrial, recreational and transportation uses.

Estes married Margaret Virginia McLeod in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, in 1943. He died in 1967 and is buried in Longview, the city he was instrumental in developing from a small town to an East Texas industrial juggernaut. His wife Margaret succeeded him as publisher and continued in that role for many years.

RICHARD J.V. “DICK” JOHNSON

Dick Johnson was one of those rare individuals who rose through the ranks of one newspaper and reached the pinnacle of his profession as chairman and publisher of one of Texas’ leading newspapers, the Houston Chronicle. Along the way he also achieved great success in developing his community and serving the people of the Houston Metropolitan Area.

Johnson was born in San Potosi, Mexico in 1930. His family returned to the states in 1937 and moved to Houston in 1941. To help support his mother and his siblings Johnson ran a Chronicle paper route.

After graduation, Johnson enrolled at Texas A&M University and played basketball for the Aggies. After a year he transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with a degree in business administration in 1952.

After serving two years in the Army, he accepted a job with the Texas Daily Newspaper Association doing market research and anything else TDNA Director John Murphy threw his way. At that time the TDNA offices were in the Chronicle Building.

Fate took a hand in Johnson’s life in 1956. His wife, Belle, was expecting their first child. He went to John Murphy and told him he needed a raise with the coming addition to the family. Murphy didn’t have the budget and told him no. Disheartened, he left the office for lunch and happened to get on the elevator with Jack Butler, the Chronicle’s general manager. Butler had heard of Johnson. During the elevator ride, he told the younger man to come see him if he ever thought about changing jobs. Johnson simply replied, “How about 2:00 today?”

His first job at the Chronicle was as a copywriter in the promotions department. He would eventually progress to the head of the department. He held seven different jobs at the Chronicle before being named president in 1973. He was named publisher in 1983 and assumed the role of chairman and publisher in 1990.

Johnson spent his entire newspaper career at the Chronicle and helped usher in cold type, offset printing and other technological advances all in the same building at 601 Texas Avenue.

Johnson was at the helm when Houston Endowment, the parent of the Chronicle, was required to sell the newspaper. Expecting to get $200 million or so, the bidding ran up until the Hearst Corporation paid $445 million for the paper —  all because of the value Johnson had helped create.

Hearst wisely kept him on staff.

He led the conversion of the Chronicle to a morning newspaper so successfully in competing with the rival morning Post that the Post eventually sold its assets to the Chronicle, which took up residence in the Post’s headquarters on the Southwest Freeway. Johnson retired from the Chronicle in 2002. He passed away in 2006.

During his career he served as president of the Texas Daily Newspaper Association and president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. He received the Pat Taggert Newspaper Leader of the Year Award from TDNA. He supported dozens of local institutions, including the Houston Food Bank, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the Houston Grand Opera and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Johnson helped start the Houston READ Commission, dedicated to erasing illiteracy.

He supported the United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast, and when he served as a campaign chairman the organization raised $61 million. Johnson even donated property he owned to the city of Houston and Habitat for Humanity in the 1990’s.

Perhaps his greatest role outside the Chronicle was his chairmanship of the world-famous

Texas Medical Center. His service was honored when the city named a street at the ever-growing center Richard J.V. Johnson Avenue.

President George W. Bush summed up Johnson’s life when he said no one had done more for the City of Houston than Dick Johnson.