Rascoe's Annenberg

The story of America's blackest journalistic episode--a Chicago circulation war which cradled gangsterism over 30 years ago--has never been documented so damningly as it apparently was last week in Author Burton Rascoe's answer to the $250,000 libel suit filed against him and Doubleday, Doran & Co. in July by Max Annenberg, a $125,000-a-year circulation director of the nation's best-selling daily, the tabloid New York News. The blustering Max Annenberg charged that a Rascoe autobiography. Before I Forget, which called Annenberg "a burly barbarian, endeavoring with conspicuous success to live down his reputation as a roughneck," maliciously defamed "a forthright, honest and faithful citizen [Annenberg] . . . always reputed, esteemed and accepted by and among all his neighbors. ..."

In his reply, filed in Supreme Court of New York County, onetime Chicago Tribune Reporter Rascoe charges Mr. Annenberg, while in employ of the Chicago Hearst papers "directed the activities of various sluggers and gunmen who were hired by him for the purpose of breaking up and destroying the carrier . . . system of ... the Chicago Tribune. . . . Sluggers . . . intimidated dealers . . . wrecked their stands and destroyed copies of ... the Tribune."

Later, Mr. Rascoe claims, Mr. Annenberg was hired away from Hearst by the Tribune to perform the same function and "in the course of this . . . war between newspapers and their gunmen, at least 30 of whom, were under the leadership of . . . the plaintiff [Mr. Annenberg] . . . 27 newspaper dealers, newsboys or others were killed" fostering in Chicago "a great amount of open lawlessness."

Mr. Rascoe further recounts that on one occasion after the Marshall Field store had withdrawn its advertising from the Hearst papers, Mr. Annenberg, then a Hearst employe, led an army of 60 drivers and newsboys which surrounded the store for an hour yelling "Marshall Field's closed!" after which the store "submitted to the oppressive tactics of the plaintiff and his co-conspirators."

That these and other incidents actually took place, Mr. Rascoe must yet prove in court.

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