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 rece ...
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 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 advertising, ...
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 tr ...
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
''San Angelo Standard-Times'' is a daily newspaper based in San Angelo, Texas, United States that was established in 1884. It is owned by Gannett.
History
The newspaper was established in 1884 by J. G. Murphy, the city's second mayor. Mr. Murp ...
''.Pederson 2004, p. 188 Other early acquisitions in the 1920s and 1930s included the '' Harlingen Star'', '' Corpus Christi Times'', ''
Big Spring Herald
The ''Big Spring Herald'' is a newspaper based in Big Spring, Texas, covering the Howard County area of West Texas. It published on weekday afternoons and Sunday mornings. It is owned by Horizon Publications Inc.
The ''Herald'' was founded as a ...
'' and '' Paris News''.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 in the mid-1950s, consolidating them into the '' Herald-Banner'' 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 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 census, and the city was the center of an urbanized area of 75,702. It is one of the principal cities in the Green ...
, merging them into the ''
Anderson Independent-Mail
The ''Anderson Independent-Mail'', marketed as ''Independent Mail'' and sometimes referred to as ''Anderson Independent Mail'', is a newspaper for Anderson County in the state of South Carolina. It is owned by GANNETT SATELLITE INFORMATION NETWO ...
''.
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 properti ...
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'' 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 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 ...
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 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 th ...
,
Greensboro, North Carolina
Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte, North Car ...
, 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 esti ...
. 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 loa ...
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'' and ''The Flyer'' in
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
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 ...
, 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 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
Precisely Holdings, LLC, doing business as Precisely, is a software company specializing in data integrity tools, and also providing big data, high-speed sorting, ETL, data integration, data quality, data enrichment, and location intelligenc ...
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