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¢ 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.