The Fall of Ivan

For close to 15 years the circulation head of the biggest U.S. daily, the New York News (circ. 2,092,455), has been hulking, bluff Ivan Annenberg, 49, member of a legendary newspaper family. His father Max, circulation boss first of Hearst's Chicago papers and later of Mc-Cormick's Chicago Tribune, directed the roughhouse Hearst-McCormick circulation wars of the early 1900s, later went to New York to build the circulation of the new tabloid News. His Uncle Moe was the boss of U.S. horse-racing news until he was sent to prison in the largest income-tax-evasion case of his time ($9,500,000).* When Max Annenberg died in 1941, Ivan stepped into his job at the New York News.

Last week Ivan Annenberg added a new chapter to the stormy Annenberg legend. The News announced that Ivan Annenberg had "resigned" as circulation director of the paper. But Annenberg had another explanation for leaving a job that paid him more than $100,000 a year.

Said he: "I was fired." Get-Together Club. The news that he was out was as big a surprise to Annenberg as it was to News staffers. While Annenberg was vacationing in Phoenix, Ariz., he got a phone call from the News's President F. M. (for Francis Marion) Flynn. Said "Jack" Flynn: "I'd like to have your resignation immediately." Flynn, says Annenberg, charged that Annenberg had "mismanaged" the News's circulation department. Annenberg flew back to New York the same day to talk things over with the boss. When he got to his office in the News building, there was no doubt about the seriousness of the matter: a guard had been posted at the door of Annenberg's cavernous office "to see that I removed nothing but my own papers." "It was charged," said Annenberg, "that there was some sort of monkey business in my department that I should have known about." The "monkey business" apparently concerned kickbacks to the News's circulation men from dealers who wanted early delivery of the paper. (Three months ago an assistant in the News's circulation department resigned amidst a flurry of such talk.) Said Annenberg: "How ridiculous would I be--if I jeopardized my salary for what they claim I took?" There was also a squabble over the Get-Together Club, an organization of News distributors that Annenberg had formed in 1945 and which, two years later, had presented Annenberg with a $7,975 Beechcraft Bonanza monoplane.

Annenberg said that the News not only knew about the plane he had received but that almost every News executive had taken rides in it.

Letter to the Board. The real reason for the blowup, implied Annenberg, was that the News's circulation has slipped nearly 15% from its postwar peak, and he was being blamed for it. Said he: "When circulation is going down, the circulation director is--well--not so great.

We used to have a very good sale on our bulldog edition, but with TV, the rise in subway fares, plus the rise in our own circulation price, our paper sales were hurt. Sunday night, for instance, is very dead. Then, too, the policy of the paper changed. Originally, it was written for the man in the street, but it became a conservative Republican paper. I could only sell the product they printed." To Annenberg, who owns "substantial" stock in the Chicago Tribune-New York News company (valued at $42,000 a share), the matter was far from settled.

He wrote a letter to the News's board of directors arguing his case. Annenberg has no hopes of getting his job back, since "we could never heal this breach." He just wants to "make sure the board of directors is completely clear as to my loyalty to the paper."

*Moe Annenberg's son Walter took over the Philadelphia Inquirer, became a Philadelphia civic leader and successful newspaper and magazine (TV Guide, Seventeen) publisher in his own right.

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