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The man who thus quietly acquired a major publishing stake in the No. 3 city of the land began his business life as a Chicago newsboy, after being brought from his native Germany as a youngster. In 1904 William Randolph Hearst made "Moe" Annenberg circulation manager of his Chicago Examiner. The tough tactics of that era gave to Mr. Annenberg and his older brother Max—a sinister aura which dogged them throughout their careers. In 1907 Moses Annenberg went to Milwaukee to distribute all the Chicago newspapers then in existence, branched out as a newsdealer all over the U. S. In 1917 he became publisher of the Wisconsin News. Two years later Mr. Hearst stepped in as owner of the News, soon made Mr. Annenberg circulation boss of the entire chain of Hearst newspapers. In 1920 Mr. Annenberg showed Hearst how Publisher Frank Munsey was merchandising magazines with a clever premium plan. Impressed, Publisher Hearst made one of his celebrated snap decisions, drawled: "Mr. Annenberg, I want you to go to New York and take charge of the magazines !'' This quick boost made Moses Annenberg circulator of all Hearst publications, but he shrewdly reserved the right to develop his own interests on the side. Biggest of these was the gradual acquisition of Daily Racing Form, track tradepaper (circulation: over 100,000), published simultaneously in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Houston, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle and Toronto. Collateral activity was the purchase and revivification of the New York Morning Telegraph, 100-year-old sporting sheet which was dreaming away in a tumbledown building opposite Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. From his wires and turf news facilities at every U. S. track, Publisher Annenberg set up Nationwide News Service, Inc., which furnishes sport and racing news to all comers, including the Associated Press, United Press, International News Service, hundreds of U. S. dailies and, inevitably, countless bookies and handbook operators. Though bettors use his services, Mr. Annenberg is himself no gamester, places no wagers, owns no tracks, keeps no racehorses, and is wroth when publisher-rivals refer to him as "Moe Annenberg, the gambler."
Other Annenberg publishing properties are the unprofitable tabloid Miami Tribune, the highly profitable pulp magazines Radio Guide, Screen Guide and Official Detective Stories. Directing such enterprises took able Mr. Annenberg out of the Hearst organization in 1926. As an independent capitalist, his holdings included Milwaukee and Manhattan real estate and a partnership in a Wall Street brokerage firm, which he luckily liquidated two days before the 1929 market panic.
Because it has long been a truism in the newspaper business that "Hearst wants to get into Philadelphia," and because of Mr. Annenberg's oldtime association with that publisher, tipsters last week thought the Inquirer purchase meant that the long-awaited Hearstian invasion was at hand. Bankers thought otherwise, believed that Mr. Annenberg had probably outbid his old chief for the Philadelphia paper. Long on the lookout for a big paper, Mr. Annenberg bought the Inquirer, not because he has any great social or political message to give to Philadelphia, but because he would rather "make a dollar in the publishing business than ten dollars anywhere else."