When he died this past April at the age of eighty-six while cruising off the coast of Italy, billionaire publisher Donald W. Reynolds released his grip on one of the largest of the few remaining privately held media empires in the U.S., the Donrey Media Group. It included fifty-two daily newspapers, fifty non-dailies, five cable TV systems, and one TV station. Forbes magazine put the value of his total holdings even in a media recession -- at just under $ 1 billion, and Fortune magazine routinely listed Reynolds on its annual list of the world's richest people.

But in death, as in life, Reynolds veiled his financial dealings in secrecy, with his probate and trust file sealed by Clark County court officials in Las Vegas. The secrets in those files should be more than items of idle curiosity for journalists: a Donrey Media spokesperson has confirmed that Reynolds left most of his fortune to the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, Inc. -- up to now an obscure nonprofit enterprise. Such a bequest could put the Reynolds Foundation on the same economic footing as the Freedom Forum and the Knight Foundation, charitable journalistic mammoths with reported assets of well over $ 600 million each.

Although Donrey Media officials say Reynolds did not own the Donrey Media Group outright, they say he owned enough of it to ensure that his bequest will be sizable. The one man who knows just how big the new foundation will be -- and what type of journalism projects it will fund -- is Fred W. Smith, chairman of the board of directors of the Reynolds Foundation and chief executive officer of the Donrey Media Group. Smith at first agreed to, and then canceled, an interview with CJR. Company officials say he was in the midst of a series of complex negotiations to sell the bulk of the Donrey Media Group to the Stephens Group Inc., an Arkansas-based, privately held investment banking and brokerage firm. The proceeds of that sale would form the bulk of the foundation's assets.

In the past, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation has been generous to student journalists and to a handful of universities. It provided two-year scholarships of $ 5,000 each to students in journalism programs in Arkansas, Texas, California, Missouri, Nevada, Hawaii, and Oklahoma. At one participating campus, California State University at Chico, the Reynolds scholarship was by far the largest single scholarship at the school.

In recent years, the foundation has given money to three universities, including a $ 9 million 1988 gift to Reynolds's alma mater, the University of Missouri at Columbia, for a new alumni center. At the time, the gift was the largest ever given to that institution.

Still, the foundation has generally shunned publicity. The newspaper group, too, can be secretive. USA Today reported that company representatives refused to give it a copy of a press release announcing the impending sale of the Donrey Media Group. The press release had been distributed to member newspapers of the Donrey chain.

In one of the few profiles of him to appear in recent years, Forbes magazine described Reynolds -- who started in the newspaper business with $ 300 -- as "consistent in ruthlessness, [with] a single-minded devotion to business and not much use for compassion." The magazine noted that Reynolds's three children will receive trust income of $ 50,000 a year for life, but will be left only $ 1 if they unsuccessfully contest his will.

In life, Reynolds had little use for journalism's elite. But should his final will and testament indeed provide the Donald Reynolds Foundation with most of his money, the name Reynolds may some day be uttered in the same breath as Knight and Nieman, Poynter and Pulitzer.

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