Newhouse

Gilbert Taylor

Be he a cultural philistine or savvy publishing mogul, Samual Isidor Newhouse Jr. is indisputably one thing: a multibillionaire. Most people probably only heard of him when he shook up Random House, fired the editors of the money-losing, left-leaning Pantheon imprint, or bought the "New Yorker", but these were but the high-publicity baths "Si" took that illuminated what he had become after years of accreting power. The chronicler of this story, a "Newsday" reporter, first encountered him, or rather, his influence, since Newhouse declined to be interviewed, when covering the Random House events in 1990. This expansion of his reportage reaches back to the founder of the privately owned Newhouse empire, Si Sr., who began with a single Staten Island newspaper, but Maier spills the most ink on the editorial head choppings that ensued from Si Jr.'s various acquisitions. To Manhattan's circles of literati tastemakers and gossipmongers, the firings bespoke the presence of a nefarious gravitational force; and while this first-time author locates it, he doesn't quite define it. Another biographer, the seasoned Carol Felsenthal (e.g., "Power, Privilege, and The Post: The Katherine Graham Story" [1992]), is currently hunting the same quarry. Perhaps her effort will come closer to the target.

From Barnes & Noble

A biography of Samuel I. Newhouse, Jr., arguably the most powerful private citizen in America, whose empire consists of two dozen newspapers, the Cond‚ Nast group of magazines, America's largest publishing group, and substantial investments in broadcasting. B&W photos.