Gannett was known for granting editorial autonomy to the different media, while consolidating and standardizing business procedures and purchases.

Gannett disliked sensationalism, so his media played down crime and scandal, and rejected advertising for liquor.

Gannett was one of four children and was raised in South Bristol, New York, by parents struggling to make ends meet[citation needed] first as farmers and later as hotel owners.

Since schools of journalism did not exist at the time, Gannett took courses in literature, history, civil and criminal law, government, Greek, and Latin.

At the end of his freshman year, Gannett was elected as his class' correspondent for the school's newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun.

Gannett held this post for one year until he acquired a paying job as a campus reporter for The Ithaca Journal.

[4] In the summer of 1898, Gannett joined the Syracuse Herald news staff, and quickly decided to forgo this job in favor of returning to Cornell University for his master's degree.

Gannett became so busy meeting these demands that he never found time to register for graduate classes that fall.

In the early weeks of 1899, Gannett was offered the secretarial position for William McKinley's Commission to visit the Philippines, and by March he arrived in Manila.

Gannett left Elmira in 1918, when he and his partner, Erwin Davenport turned their sights to Rochester, New York where a "politico-journalistic dog fight" between three evening newspapers caught their eye.

[8] Gannett moved his headquarters to Rochester, New York, to supervise the news end of his newly acquired newspaper.

To combat Hearst's entrance to the Rochester newspaper business, Gannett brought the Knickerbocker Press and Albany Evening News in 1928.

William Randolph Hearst pulled out of Rochester, where at one point he was bribing citizens with new cars in order to attract new customers.

Hearst felt "sounder because he was putting his financial house in order all along the line and had just concluded a constructive deal in Rochester and Albany, N.

"[10] Ever the businessman, Hearst continuously offered to buy the Times-Union from Gannett, Davenport, and their friend Woodard J. Copeland.

Gannett backed Franklin D. Roosevelt during his early years of his presidency but by the late 1930s withdrew his support.

[11][7] Frank Gannett briefly ran for the 1940 Republican presidential nomination, but lost to Wendell Willkie.

His obituary in Time magazine read that "Gannett, 81, [was a] publisher-founder of an empire that includes 22 newspapers, four radio and three TV stations.

By 2012, the company also owned 23 TV stations that reached 21 million households, roughly 18 percent of the United States population.

[15] The libraries at Elmira College,[16] Utica University,[17] and Ithaca College[18] are named for him, in addition to the student health center at Cornell University (Gannett Health Services)[19] and the building that houses the printing and photography programs at Rochester Institute of Technology.