Letting Go of a Legacy

After his father's death in 1942, Walter Annenberg pledged on the front page of his most prized legacy, the Philadelphia Inquirer, to live the rest of his life in the City of Brotherly Love and to uphold "the great traditions" of the newspaper. Annenberg stopped living in Philadelphia this past April when his long friendship with Richard Nixon got him a new address in London as Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. Last week he announced he was also giving up the Inquirer. He sold both the morning Inquirer and its sister paper, the afternoon Daily News, to Knight Newspapers for about $55 million.

The sale surprised the staffs of both papers, who recalled another statement by Annenberg in the Inquirer last February that despite rumors, neither paper was on the market. It also surprised Knight Newspapers, whose president, Lee Hills, emphasized: "Annenberg came to us. But why he did so and what was on his mind, I cannot say." The only explanation Annenberg offered came in a prepared statement: "With the passing of my only son, there is no likely possibility of family transference, and hence my desire to ensure a future ownership in which I have confidence." This posed more questions than it answered. For one thing, Annenberg's son died in 1962. Why wait so long to sell?

Near Monopoly. One possible factor: Annenberg may have feared trouble with the Federal Communications Commission. His Triangle Publications company owns several television and radio stations, as well as TV Guide, Seventeen magazine, the Morning Telegraph and the Daily Racing Form. Renewal of Triangle's license to operate WFIL-TV in Philadelphia has been opposed by a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, Milton Shapp. He claimed last July that Triangle exercised "a near news monopoly in the Philadelphia area," and that under Annenberg's direction, news had been "censored, omitted, twisted, distorted and used for personal vengeance." Triangle denied the charges, but Shapp insisted upon public hearings. To date, no hearings have been scheduled--but neither has the license been renewed.

Public hearings involving Triangle Publications, particularly operation of the Inquirer, could be unpleasant for Annenberg (and for Nixon, who has already been criticized for sending the often awkward, sometimes gauche Annenberg to London). Although Shapp may be preparing for another crack at Pennsylvania's governorship, there is some truth to his charges of capricious news control. Many of them were documented by Philadelphia magazine earlier this year. Item: For reasons often known only to Annenberg, names of newsworthy people have been banned from Inquirer stories. (Ever changing, the list has included University of Pennsylvania President Gaylord P. Harnwell and Dinah Shore.) Item: In another form of blackout, he forbade his reporters to "bother" Ronald Reagan with interviews when the California Governor visited Philadelphia last year, thus giving the opposition Bulletin a clean beat. In short, if Annenberg wanted to sell part of Triangle, the Inquirer may have been his smartest choice. Though he is a man with good traits (he has donated millions to charity), the Inquirer brought out his arbitrary arrogance. And perhaps there was another factor in its sale: its daily circulation had dropped more than 200,000 in ten years, and it was not among Triangle's biggest moneymakers.

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