Frank Wood, who died May 27, 2011, at age 82, made headlines for his spirited battle as publisher of the Green Bay News-Chronicle against Gannett Co., the owner of the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
In 1976, while he already was running the weekly Brown County Chronicle, some shoppers and a printing business, Wood bought a share of the Green Bay Daily News — a newspaper launched four years earlier by typographers who were on strike against the Press-Gazette. He merged the daily newspaper with his weekly and called it the News-Chronicle.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2000, Wood said he was convinced that Gannett Co., which bought the Press-Gazette in 1980, intended to put the News-Chronicle out of business so it could dominate the Green Bay market. He published a series of articles critical of Gannett in 1989, and his efforts to keep publishing a second daily newspaper in Green Bay were a focus of the 1996 book “The Chain Gang” by Richard McCord.
Wood, who was inducted into the Wisconsin Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2002, sold the News-Chronicle and 33 other publications from Brown County Publishing Co. to Gannett for an undisclosed price in 2004. Gannett ended publication of the News-Chronicle in 2005.
In addition to his publishing roles, Wood taught humanities courses at St. Norbert College in De Pere. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago after serving in the U.S. Army and later a master’s degree from Marquette University.
Wood and his wife of 60 years, Agnes, had seven children — Patrick, Christopher, Michael, Dan, Rebecca, Tom and Megan — 13 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
