Harte Hanks is a global marketing services company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Harte Hanks services include analytics, strategy, marketing technology, creative services, digital marketing, customer care, direct mail, logistics, and fulfillment.
History
Founded by
Houston Harte Houston Harriman Harte was a newspaperman who co-founded Harte-Hanks Communications.
Harte was born January 12, 1893 in Knob Noster, Missouri. After a year at the University of California, Harte returned to the University of Missouri, where he rec ...
and Bernard Hanks in 1923 as Harte-Hanks Newspapers (and later Harte-Hanks Communications), the company spent its first 50 years operating newspapers in Texas. In 1968, the company relocated from Abilene to San Antonio.Pederson 2004, p. 187 It made its first
IPO
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
on March 8, 1972, later diversifying into
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
and
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
properties. In 1984, the company's managers took it private, later going public again in 1993. In the mid-1990s, the company withdrew from the newspaper and broadcasting business and focused solely on direct marketing and shopper publications.
Newspapers
Harte Hanks' first newspapers were Hanks' ''
Abilene Reporter-News
''Abilene Reporter-News'' is a daily newspaper based in Abilene, Texas, United States. The newspaper started publishing as the weekly ''Abilene Reporter'', helmed by Charles Edwin Gilbert on June 17, 1881, just three months after Abilene was fo ...
'' and Harte's '' San Angelo Standard''.Pederson 2004, p. 188 Other early acquisitions in the 1920s and 1930s included the '' Harlingen Star'', ''
Corpus Christi Times
The ''Corpus Christi Caller-Times'' is the newspaper of record for Corpus Christi, Texas.
History
There has been a newspaper in Corpus Christi for almost as long as there has been a town. In 1883, the ''Caller'' was started in a frame building ...
Paris News
''The Paris News'' is a newspaper based in Paris, Texas, covering the Northeast Texas counties of Lamar, Delta, Red River and Fannin, plus Choctaw County, Oklahoma. It publishes three days a week (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays). It is owned ...
''.Answers.com: Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. accessed January 26, 2007. The company incorporated as Harte-Hanks Newspapers, Inc. in 1948.
The company bought two competing newspapers in
Greenville, Texas
Greenville is a city in Hunt County, Texas, United States, about northeast of Dallas. It is the county seat and largest city of Hunt County. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 25,557, and in 2019, its estimated population was 28,827. ...
in the mid-1950s, consolidating them into the ''
Herald-Banner
The ''Herald-Banner'' is a five-day morning daily newspaper published in Greenville, Texas, covering Hunt County. It does not publish a Sunday or Monday edition.
The newspaper is published by Community Newspaper Holdings. The ''Herald-Banner'' al ...
'' after two years of fierce rivalry. A court case followed, with Harte Hanks accused of unfair competition. The chain was acquitted of the charges in 1959.
In 1962, the company took full ownership of ''
San Antonio Express-News
The ''San Antonio Express-News'' is a daily newspaper in San Antonio, Texas. It is owned by the Hearst Corporation and has offices in San Antonio and Austin, Texas. The ''Express-News'' is the third largest newspaper in the state of Texas, with ...
'', its largest circulation newspaper. The ''Express-News'' was one of the first properties Harte Hanks sold off, however, as it began to narrow its focus to smaller newspapers and eventually to direct marketing.
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
paid $19 million for the ''Express-News'' in 1973.
At the time of the first
IPO
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
in 1972, the firm owned properties in 19 markets across six states. The paper expanded outside of Texas that year with the purchase of the ''Anderson Independent'' and ''Anderson Daily Mail'' of
Anderson, South Carolina
Anderson is a city in and the county seat of Anderson County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 28,106 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, and the city was the center of an urbanized area of 75,702. It is one of the prin ...
, merging them into the '' Anderson Independent-Mail''.
By 1980, the company owned 29 daily and 68 weekly newspapers.
In 1995, Harte Hanks sold to
Community Newspaper Company
Community Newspaper Company, or CNC, was the largest publisher of weekly newspapers in eastern Massachusetts in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century. It also published several daily newspapers in Greater Boston.
The company's propertie ...
its interest in the Massachusetts-based '' Middlesex News'', two other dailies, and associated weeklies in the western suburbs of
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
. It had owned the ''News'' since 1972 and bought the ''
News-Tribune
''The News Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Tacoma, Washington. It is the second-largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington with a weekday circulation of 30,945 in 2020. With origins dating back to 1883, the newspaper w ...
'' and '' Daily Transcript'' in 1986.
The Abilene, Anderson, Corpus Christi, and San Angelo papers were among the last remaining Harte Hanks newspaper properties and were sold to
E. W. Scripps Company
The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...
in May 1997. Scripps spun out its newspaper assets into
Journal Media Group
Journal Media Group (formerly Journal Communications) was a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based newspaper publishing company. The company's roots were first established in 1882 as the owner of its namesake, the ''Milwaukee Journal'', and expanded into br ...
in April 2015. Journal was then absorbed into
Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.KENS-AM- TV, San Antonio's
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
radio and television affiliates, as part of its acquisition of the ''Express-News''. Harte Hanks turned KENS from a perennial ratings also-ran to the market leader by 1968. In the 1970s, the newspaper-dominated company further diversified its holdings by purchasing the WAIM radio and TV stations in Anderson as part of its purchase of the ''Independent'' and ''Mail'', as well as television stations in
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the seat of Duval County, with which the ...
,
Greensboro, North Carolina
Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte and Raleigh, the 69th-most populous city in the Un ...
, and
Springfield, Missouri
Springfield is the third largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Springfield metropolitan area, which had an estimat ...
. In 1978, Harte Hanks bought radio stations formerly owned by Southern Broadcasting. In 1980, the company's broadcast holdings were four television stations, 11 radio stations and four cable television systems. It sold off most of these assets in the mid-1980s to pay down debt incurred in the
leveraged buyout
A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loan ...
that took the company private. Harte Hanks continued to hold KENS until 1997, when it and the company's remaining newspaper properties were sold to Scripps.
Television stations
Other businesses
Harte Hanks was formerly associated with the publication of weekly shopper publications, with a circulation at one time of 13 million weekly in 1,100 separate editions of ''The
PennySaver
A pennysaver (or free ads paper, Friday Ad or shopper) is a free community periodical available in North America (typically weekly or monthly publications) that advertises items for sale. Frequently pennysavers are actually called ''The Pennysave ...
'' and ''The Flyer'' in
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
and
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, respectively. The company sold ''The Flyer'' to
Coda Media
Coda Media is a New York-based online crisis reporting news platform, headed by Natalia Antelava, a former BBC correspondent, and Ilan Greenberg, a magazine and newspaper writer who served as a staff reporter for ''The Wall Street Journal''. Pet ...
in 2012, having owned it since 1983. ''The PennySaver'' and website PennySaverUSA.com, a nationwide network of local advertising content online for consumers and businesses,Pasiuk 2006, p. 80 were sold to
OpenGate Capital
Andrew Nikou is the founder and CEO of OpenGate Capital, a global private buyout firm. The firm is focused on the acquisition of lower to middle market businesses that are often privately owned, or non-core divisions of larger companies located ar ...
in 2013. Harte Hanks had owned the publication since 1972.
In 2006, Harte Hanks acquired Global Address, a software company based in the United Kingdom that developed International Address Validation technology. In 2008, Global Address was renamed to Trillium Software. Trillium Software was later sold to Syncsort in 2016.
In 2008, Harte Hanks acquired Mason Zimbler, a UK-based digital marketing and media provider.
In 2008, Harte Hanks acquired Strange & Dawson, a UK-based digital advertising service.
In 2010, Harte Hanks acquired Information Arts, a UK-based data insight, data management and database-marketing firm.
In 2015, Harte Hanks acquired San Mateo, California-based digital marketing firm 3Q Digital. In 2018, Harte Hanks sold 3Q back to an entity owned by previous 3Q Digital owners.
References
* Pederson, J. (2004), ''International directory of company histories, Volume 63'', St. ₨ourcing and Offshoring Industry Almanac 2007'', Plunkett Research, Limited