ABSTRACT
In the US, the absence of a coordinated national response to the COVID-19 pandemic left decision-making to state and local leaders. In Texas, debate over how best to decrease the virus' spread highlighted political tensions between the Republican state leadership and the predominantly Democratic county- and city-leaders. We analyze the daily newspapers of two major cities, Houston and El Paso, to understand similarities and differences in local pandemic-related concerns. We focus specifically on three periods: the days immediately following the first case of COVID-19 in Texas in March 2020, the days surrounding the peak of the first major spike in July 2020, and the days surrounding the second, more deadly spike in January 2021. We trace the progression of the pandemic in Houston and El Paso, analyzing the prevalent newspaper themes and illustrating regional differences through word clouds, which provide a visual analysis of the COVID-19 related coverage. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.