Journal. Soon after, he began selling reports to other newspapers as well. A quickly increasing demand led to Gannett hiring a group of students to help. Throughout his college career Gannett would work for various magazines and newspapers. Gannett's time at Cornell was a successful one, leaving school with not only a B.A. degree, but $1,000 as well. The rise of a media mogul In the summer of 1898, Gannett joined the Syracuse Herald news staff, but quickly decided to forgo this job in favor of returning to Cornell for his master's degree. Upon his return, Gannett was bombarded with requests for his news about Cornell from the newspapers clients he had served as an undergraduate. Ironically, Gannett became so busy meeting these demands that he never found time to register for graduate classes that fall. He returned to Cornell the following year determined to complete his graduate degree, but would not stay for long. 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 stayed in the Philippines for a year, learning of foreign politics and culture. Upon his return, he accepted a job as city editor for the Ithaca News. He would also become editor of the Pittsburg Index in 1905. In 1906 Gannett became half owner of the daily newspaper the Elmira Gazette. Within the year, Gannett merged the Elmira Gazette and Elmira Star forming the Elmira Star-Gazette, which is still in circulation. Throughout his career, Gannett was known as "The Great Hyphenator". The media magnate was known to buy and merge money-losing dailies to create profit. Six years later, in 1912 the partners also purchased the Ithaca Journal. 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. Gannett and his partner sought to buy The Union and Advertiser and the Times, but they required $250,000 in cash. The two partners raised the money through friends and bank loans. Once the newspapers were purchased they were merged into the Rochester Times-Union. Gannett moved his headquarters to Rochester to supervise the news end of his newly acquired newspaper. The company's headquarters would remain in Rochester until 1986, when it was relocated to Arlington County, Virginia. Gannett and Davenport