The Chain That Isn't

To upstate New York's Rochester Democrat & Chronicle in 1886 came an indignant letter from one of its newsboys. Protesting that he had been billed 6-c- too much for his papers, ten-year-old Frank Ernest Gannett demanded that the error be "rectified," added in his boyish scrawl: "I have always meet my bills."

From this aggressive faith in the rewards of enterprise, hardheaded Newsboy Gannett (accent on the nett) never wavered. It led him, frustratingly, into politics, notably as the highly unsuccessful "businessman's candidate" for the Republican presidential nomination in 1940, into propaganda as angel and pamphleteer for the National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government and sundry other ultraconservative pressure groups. Through industry and acumen, round-faced, open-handed Frank Gannett also built one of the nation's biggest and most profitable newspaper empires. When he died last week in Rochester at 81, long-ailing Frank Gannett not only owned the 125-year-old Democrat & Chronicle (circ. 125,405), but 21 other papers as well--more than any other U.S. publisher has ever acquired without the help of inheritance.

Tolerant Teetotaler. Frank Gannett was a chain publisher who hated chain papers. Instead of cultivating a deadening conformity, papers in the Gannett "group," as the publisher preferred to call it, were encouraged to vary their typography, choose their own features, mold editorial policies to suit their own communities. Boasted Publisher Gannett: "Nothing ever goes out of my office with a 'must' on it." Example: though Gannett and his flagship paper, Rochester's evening Times-Union (circ. 128,147), zealously promoted the St. Lawrence Seaway, his Albany Knickerbocker News (circ. 53,870) doggedly fought the project as an economic threat to Albany.

Publisher Gannett, whose name appeared as editor only on the Times-Union masthead, always sent his political pronouncements to his other editors with the notation: "For your information and use, if desired"--and editors were free to ignore them.

In 1948, when other Gannett papers (nearly all in solid Republican territory) supported Tom Dewey for President, Gannett's Independent Democratic Hartford (Conn.) Times (circ. 120,182) backed Truman; in 1952, when Gannett backed Taft, the Times and most other papers in the group boomed Eisenhower. His Independent Republican Binghamton (N.Y.) Press (circ. 64,562), one of the best small-city newspapers in the U.S., has lately made a habit of supporting Democrats for mayor. During a state election campaign in which several of his papers had gone counter to Gannett's publicly expressed views, F.E.G., as he was called, sighed to Vice President (now President) Paul Miller: "You know, Paul, sometimes I don't know about this autonomy." Tolerant Teetotaler Gannett's only inviolate command: his papers must never accept liquor ads.

Responsibility. The Gannett papers, nonetheless, share distinct family traits that go beyond sound management or geographical proximity. (Except for Illinois' Danville Commercial-News, New Jersey's Plainfield Courier-News and the Hartford Times, all are published in New York cities and small towns.) Conservative in news judgment as in politics, they have little use for exposes, play down stories of sex and crime. "A newspaper, to suit me," said Gannett, "must be one that I would be willing to have my mother, my own sister or daughter read." Many readers, particularly in the 15 cities where Gannett has a monopoly, complain that the modern mothers would not object to livelier coverage or sharper writing.

On the other hand, most of the papers are enthusiastic home-town boosters, campaign busily for local improvements, sponsor dozens of community enterprises. In keeping with this sense of community responsibility--and to perpetuate his newspapers--Publisher Gannett in 1935 gave two-thirds of his Gannett Co. common stock to a philanthropic foundation administered by his executives.

The Great Hyphenator. For his career of building profitable provincial dailies, farm-born Frank Gannett was prepared a maxim-minded mother ("Little strokes fell big oaks") and the example of a father who was a failure as a farmer and hotelkeeper. After working his way through Cornell, Newsman Gannett had risen to managing editor of the Ithaca News before he bought a half share of the ailing Elmira Gazette in 1906 (for $20,000), later merged it with the rival Evening Star. Gannett started looking for other money-losing dailies to buy and merge--and soon won fame as the busiest newspaper hyphenator in upstate New York. From Rochester, where he merged the Union & Advertiser with the Times, he went on to combine Utica's Herald-Dispatch and Observer, Elmira's Telegram and Advertiser, Ithaca's News and Journal. He fought Hearst in Rochester (where W.R.H. spent $8,000,000 in a hopeless stab at putting F.E.G. out of business), and was himself driven to the ropes in Brooklyn, where he bought the old Eagle in 1929 and shucked it at a loss of $2,000,000 three years later. He never founded a paper, but he bought with an auditor's sure eye; in all, Publisher Gannett acquired 30 papers (plus a string of TV and radio stations) in 51 years, merged ten, unloaded only three.

In politics, Gannett backed Franklin Roosevelt in his early years, but by 1940 was billing himself as The Man Who Stopped the New Dealers. While he was denounced by F.D.R. as an "isolationist"--and by the late Andrei Vishinsky as a "warmonger"--Gannett in his political philosophy was always animated by the same abhorrence of waste that made him a successful publisher. Though he suffered from diabetes for 33 years, Frank Gannett did not slow perceptibly until 1948, when he had a stroke. Bouncing back, he ran his empire until 1955, when he fractured his spine in a fall. Management and the presidency of the Gannett group has since gone into the hands of able, Gannett-groomed Paul Miller, 51, onetime Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, who believes as firmly as F.E.G. in giving his editors free rein.

For a man who has done so much in a field where the tools of self-promotion are so irresistibly at hand, Gannett was a surprisingly little-known man, even in the communities he served. "Although he owned the Times for 30 years," said a Hartford Timesman, "if he walked through the business section it is doubtful whether two people would have recognized him." But one measure of Frank Gannett's success was the fact that his papers last week ran their own staff-written editorials on their publisher's death.

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