By Michael Miner
Sengstacke intends to be the next publisher of the Chicago Defender, which her great-granduncle Robert Abbott founded 93 years ago and her grandfather John Sengstacke ran from 1940 until he died in May 1997 at the age of 84. Robert Sengstacke, who is Myiti’s father and John’s son, isn’t so sure John Sengstacke could ever have approved of anybody but John Sengstacke running the Defender. But he doesn’t mind if Myiti wants to think differently.
“My father did many very great things,” Robert Sengstacke was saying outside the courtroom. “Most of that was in the 40s and 50s.” Now he just hopes to be able to cash in his 15 shares in Sengstacke Enterprises for the $900,000 he thinks they’re worth, and if his daughter wants to go save the Defender he wishes her well. “Not that I don’t have any confidence in my children,” he told me, “but I have 40 years’ experience in this business, and I know what it will take to turn the Defender around. The Defender was mismanaged and neglected the last 35 years.”
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A professional photographer, Robert Sengstacke said that over the years he wore many hats at the Defender, and for six years in the 70s even ran the Tri-State Defender, the Sengstacke Enterprises weekly in Memphis, raising its circulation from 1,000 to 15,000. But his father never stepped aside. “My father did not see anyone capable of operating the Defender but himself,” he told me. “Over the years it was a constant struggle. It took eight years to get him to install the first computer system at the Defender. The Michigan Chronicle [the family’s weekly in Detroit] had been computerized for 20 years. It was clearly the way to go.”
Cherry runs PublicMediaWorks, a company he created to buy newspapers. He was vastly outbid by Hollinger a couple of years ago for Gary’s Post-Tribune. Now he’s offering $12.5 million for Sengstacke Enterprises–though there’s been no trustee in place to accept it. “It’s a great business opportunity,” he told me. “Look, there is a niche for these kinds of publications. But is it risky? Very much so. To execute this kind of strategy you need high-quality managers.”
“And that was not what she wanted to hear.”
“A lot of people look at that as a negative,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s dirty money. If anything, it’s a positive, because for you to own a casino you’re checked thoroughly by the IRS. They know everything about you, even what your grandmother does for a living. You have to be clean.”
