The passing of Legendary Inns of Newport founder Winthrop P. Baker Jr., in 2003 was reported in a number of national publications, where he was remembered as an innovator in both the hospitality industry, later in his life, and earlier, as a powerful and influential TV executive who ran what is today both CBS and NBC TV networks. Below are accounts from The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

Winthrop Baker Jr., 71, Dies; Broadcaster Turned Innkeeper

By Wolfgang Saxon - June 12, 2003, Thursday

Winthrop Patterson Baker Jr., who went from trailblazing as a Westinghouse Broadcasting television executive to doing the same for deluxe bed-and-breakfasts in New England, died on Saturday at Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut. He was 71 and lived in Wilton, Conn.

The cause was complications of pulmonary fibrosis, his family said.

Mr. Baker, a native New Yorker who began in television in Louisiana, was president of the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company in New York in the 1970's. At his death, he operated antiques-embellished inns that offered expensive traditional comforts, especially at several boutique inns in Newport, R.I.

Win Baker, who counted John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, among his Mayflower forebears, was born in Manhattan. His father was a stockbroker, antiques dealer and amateur carpenter who left Wall Street during the Depression.

The son grew up in New Orleans, graduated in 1953 with a degree in business administration from Louisiana State University and got a director's job at a New Orleans television station. He had managerial positions at stations in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, La.; Peoria, Ill.; Boston; Baltimore; Philadelphia; and Pittsburgh before being named president of Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1973.

At the time, Westinghouse was an innovative national powerhouse in radio and television, vying for prominence with competing networks, sometimes in association with them, sometimes in fierce rivalries.

At various stages of his career, Mr. Baker produced, directed and wrote hundreds of programs. He helped develop concepts that survive in today's feature-heavy news, all-talk and magazine formats. He foreshadowed them with ''PM Magazine'' in 1976. During his tenure, a Westinghouse station in Baltimore began a morning talk show with a young anchorwoman named Oprah Winfrey.

He remained as Westinghouse president in New York until 1979 and retired from television in 1984 as president and general manager of WNEV-TV in Boston, now WHDH.

With an inherited bent for restoration and things antique, he found a new career with Legendary Inns of Newport. He discovered and rescued the legacy of the Rhode Island artist and heiress Beatrice Turner by buying Cliffside, her home near Newport's Cliffwalk, in 1989. A nondescript bed-and-breakfast by then, under Mr. Baker it was revived with a blend of modern amenities and Victorian elegance, replete with the artist's self-portraits.

He also bought and renovated the Adele Turner Inn in 2001 and the Abigail Stoneman Inn, which opened last summer. All of them have received praise from travel magazines, both for their lodgings and their top-ranked tea rooms.

Mr. Baker is survived by his wife of 47 years, Elizabeth Allegret Baker; three sons, Winthrop P. III, of Newport, who succeeds him as president of Legendary Inns, John Adams, of San Francisco, and Michael K., of Needham, Mass.; and seven grandchildren.

"Win" Baker; Considered A Visionary In TV, Hospitality Fields

By Tom Long June 11, 2003

Winthrop P. Baker Jr., 71, a visionary TV executive who shifted gears late in life to become an innovator in the upscale hospitality industry, died of pulmonary fibrosis Saturday in Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut.

The former president of Westinghouse Broadcasting and general manager of WBZ-TV and WNEV-TV in Boston, Mr. Baker had a hand in the creation of "Eyewitness News,""Evening Magazine," and other programming concepts that became popular at TV stations across the country. After leaving the industry in 1984, he owned and operated a chain of upscale lodging houses called Legendary Inns of Newport.

"The people in the TV business never would have thought that he would end up in the inn business and the people in the hospitality industry knew nothing about his TV work," his son, Winthrop III of Newport, R.I., said yesterday. Mr. Baker, known as Win, was the owner of the Cliffside Inn, the former home of artist Beatrice Turner; the Adele Turner Inn, which was named one of America's most romantic inns by Country Living magazine, and his latest acquisition, the Abigail Stoneman Inn, a Victorian manse where visitors can order from a "pillow menu" of 20 head rests, a "bathing experience" menu of 30 fine soaps and bath salts delivered on a silver tray, and a "water menu" with two dozen choices of bottled H20.

"He had an incredible eye for details and a flair for sales and marketing that served him very well in TV and very well in the hospitality business," said his son, who is also involved with the inn chain.

"He didn't want to become an innkeeper, but he saw a niche for upscale lodgings-better than a bed and breakfast, but smaller than a luxury hotel."

He said visitors often marveled at the design flourishes in the upscale inns and asked about their interior decorators.

"We never had one," he said. "It was my father. He had a longtime interest in the Victorian period and I think it was a logical extension of his interest in antiques."

Mr. Baker bought the Cliffside Inn in 1989. "I think he may have become involved as a hobby," said his son. "But it soon became a major, multimillion-dollar business. He launched a second career."

Mr. Baker was born in New York City. He graduated from Louisiana State University.

He bagan his career in TV at WJMR in New Orleans and was a producer and director at stations in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, La., until the early '60s, when he became assistant program manager at WBZ-TV for a few years. He did a stint at a station in Philadelphia before returning to WBZ as general manager and vice president from 1968 to 1973.

He then was president of Westinghouse Broadcasting in New York for six years, before coming back to Boston in 1979 as president and general manager of WNEV-TV, Channel 7.

Mr. Baker took over after David Mugar led a successful challenge to Channel 7's broadcast license. For months, while the station's former owners exhausted their appeals, Mr. Baker made plans for the eventual takeover.

While he waited, he wrote a 100-page book detailing the way he thought a TV station should operate.

"He put together his dream team," Don Lowery, a spokesman for WBZ-TV, said yesterday. "Tom Ellis and Robin Young were the news anchors."

"He had very innovative ways of doing things," said Lowery, who worked with Mr. Baker at WNEV-TV. "He tried to inject a newness into everything he did."

Among the shows he launched was a two-hour late afternoon news magazine called "Look."

"His concept was nothing short of brilliant," Mugar said yesterday. "The object was to re-create Look Magazine in TV form and help the station avoid buying syndicated programming by filling two hours every day with our own. He was truly a visionary."