The chains: the metro collector
Hearst Newspapers advertising, translated
Where Gannett collects towns and Lee collects mid-size markets, Hearst collects metros. The buying consequence: each city desk behaves like a metro daily.
Hearst’s newspaper group runs major metros, the Houston Chronicle and San Francisco Chronicle among them, plus regional titles clustered in Texas, the Bay Area, Connecticut, and upstate New York. Rate posture: quote-only per market, no public cards found at retrieval, each metro desk selling its own print and digital bundles.
Source: Hearst Newspapers, retrieved Jul 31, 2026.
Rate posture
Quote-only
Quote-only; metro portfolio (Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, and others) sold per market with print plus digital bundles.
Source: Hearst Newspapers, retrieved Jul 31, 2026.
Cheapest published figure
None
Quote-only; no public rate cards per market found at retrieval.
Verified 2026-07-31. Recent changes: None verified.
Buying a Hearst metro
Treat each Hearst paper as the metro daily it is: the LA Times playbook transfers directly. Ask the city desk for the current rate card, the zoned edition map, and per-inch figures in writing; expect Sunday and section-front premiums, and expect the print-plus-digital program pitch, since Hearst’s metros lean on digital subscriptions and like advertisers who buy both. The cluster geography is the distinctive opportunity: a Texas or Connecticut brand can cover several Hearst titles in one negotiation, and reps can price the cluster, so ask for the multi-title figure and the single-title figures in the same email and compare.
Category fit
Which businesses suit which Hearst markets
Hearst’s metro audiences skew like metro dailies generally: older, established, homeowning (the readership page carries the sourced demographics). That fits professional services, healthcare, home improvement, real estate, and cultural institutions; it fits impulse retail less. As with every quote-only seller on this desk, the discipline is unchanged: named unit, named dates, print-only figure in writing, then the discount menu. Chain comparison shopping continues at Gannett vs Lee and the index at the papers desk.
Source: Hearst Newspapers, retrieved Jul 31, 2026. Portfolio composition per Hearst's newspapers page.