HEARST BUYS HOUSTON CHRONICLE FOR 400 MLN DLRS The <Hearst Corp> is buying the Houston Chronicle from Houston Endowment Inc for 400 mln dlrs. The announcement was made jointly by Frank Bennack Jr, president and chief executive officer of Hearst, and Richard Johnson, president of the Chronicle. The Houston Endowment is selling the paper to comply with federal tax laws requiring charitable institutions to divest themselves of profit-making subsidiaries by 1989. The Chronicle has a daily circulation of over 425,000 and is in competition with the Houston Post, owned by the <Toronto Sun Publishing Corp>, with a circulation of about 316,000. The acquisition gives Hearst its biggest newspaper holding in Texas, where the California-based publisher already owns papers in San Antonio, Beaumont and Laredo. The chain also owns, among others, the flagship San Francisco Examiner, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.