S.I. Newhouse, Jr., the Chairman Emeritus of Condé Nast, died today in New York, the city he was born in and the one that gave foundation to the empire he built. With his passing, at the age of 89, so goes the last of the great visionaries of the magazine business. Indeed, in a career that spanned more than six decades, he placed the Newhouse family name firmly in the pantheon of American publishing, alongside those of Luce, Sulzberger, Graham, and Hearst.
The Condé Nast company was once a distant, white-gloved competitor to Henry Luce’s muscular dominion of Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and People. But with the revival of Vanity Fair, in 1983, and the purchase of The New Yorker, in 1985, Si transformed his company into a powerhouse of style and substance. He inherited a carriage-trade house encompassing Vogue, Glamour, House & Garden, and Mademoiselle, and built from there, launching or adding not only Vanity Fair and The New Yorker but Self, GQ, Wired, Details, W, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, and Bon Appétit, among other titles. In 1980, he built out the book side of the family business by purchasing Random House, including Alfred A. Knopf.
Decade in and decade out, his publications helped report and set the style for much of the civilized world. And much as Si appreciated their outsize influence, he wasn’t one to shimmer around the smart drawing rooms where his magazines wound up. It just wasn’t his thing. What he really loved were the magazines themselves. As objects. And as businesses. He loved them the way his younger brother, Donald loved the family newspapers. Although modest in aspect, Si ran his fiefdom the way I imagine Louis B. Mayer ran Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its heyday. If Si wanted certain writers or photographers (or editors, for that matter), he went after them. And more often than not, he got them. Once, in a negotiation I was involved in with a photographer, it came down to a $250,000 difference between what the photographer’s agent wanted and what we were willing to pay. “Oh give it,” he told me, finally. “I don’t want to nickel-and-dime them.”
He was an early riser, getting to work before sunrise—and before the day’s traffic could clog the streets. He ate lunch at noon. I don’t mean noon-ish—I mean 12 sharp. He ate simply and quickly. Bernie Leser, a veteran hand from the British and Australian wing of the empire, told me that, in the days when Si smoked, he often puffed between bites. He generally left the office around 3:30. He worked out, read for an hour or two, and then, with his wife, Victoria, went out to a film or an opera, or had an early dinner and then turned in. He was religious about his fitness routine. I was once having a drink with Warren Beatty at the bar of the Bel-Air hotel, in Los Angeles. When Si came in with Victoria and Donald and Donald’s wife, Sue, Warren went over to their table and said that he and Si had been doing circuit training in the same gym in New York a few weeks back, and that he could never have kept up with Si’s exertions. It was one of the many times I saw Si beam.
His work uniform was simple but comfortable: navy polo shirt, cotton chinos, brown Car Shoe loafers, and an old New Yorker sweatshirt. Because he was fit, he looked good in this rig. If he had to, Si could brush up. Back in the days when the Newhouses still owned Random House, he and Donald, Donald’s son Steve, Knopf editor Sonny Mehta, and Random House C.E.O. Alberto Vitale would assemble in the first booth along the wall of the Grill Room of the Four Seasons. The restaurant was one of the last holdouts of the jacket-required rule for men, and Si went along with this. I once saw a blue suit with a powder-blue shirt and dark-blue knit tie on a hanger in his office. When duty called, he was ready—like a smaller, older Superman.
Long before I came to know Si properly, I had asked to see him in order to get some advice about a twice-a-week newspaper I wanted to start in New York. He invited me to come by at seven a.m. I got there a half-hour early and waited out on the sidewalk. At 6:55 I made my way up to his office. It was large and spare, done up in blond wood and lush, white, wall-to-wall carpeting. On the walls were original panels of the old Krazy Kat cartoon strip. His assistant brought us tall, thin glasses filled with iced milk coffee. Si and I talked for about 15 minutes. The upshot was that he thought there was a dip in the economy around the corner, and he advised me not to start the paper.
As I stood up and began to put on my overcoat, the tail of it hit my glass of coffee. And in what I can only describe as the closest thing to real-life slow motion I have ever experienced, I watched in horror as the contents of the glass tumbled out onto the beautiful white carpeting. I apologized profusely and tried to mop things up with my handkerchief. He put his hand on my shoulder and said words that I will forever be grateful for: “Don’t worry about it,” he said with a laugh. “I do it all the time.”
I didn’t start that paper. But I did take over The New York Observer. It was then a sleepy, provincial weekly with a charmingly antiquated broadsheet design and was printed on pink paper, like the Financial Times. I went in with a plan that mapped out a series of changes over a 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month period. At the half-year mark, I was pleased enough with our progress to begin sending the paper out every week to friends in the U.S. and Europe—many of them editors.
The only reason I mention all of this is that a few months later, Si took one of his regular tours of Condé Nast’s European properties. And damned if he didn’t find a copy of the Oberver in everybody’s in-basket. Si left the Continent thinking that everyone in his circle over there was getting the paper—overlooking the fact that the copies were going out unsolicited, and for free, and that they were in people’s in-baskets and therefore not read yet. When he returned to New York he asked me over to his apartment for a drink and offered me a job.
That was the thing about Si. He was a gambler—especially when it came to backing the things or people he cherished or saw promise in. He scooped up The New Yorker and hung in there for decades, despite its losses, until it found its new footing—and, in this century, its profitability. Following his relaunch of Vanity Fair, he saw losses mount to close to $100 million before he was in the clear and the magazine began turning a profit. Si spent what needed to be spent. But he kept a close eye on what was coming in. Magazines are expensive propositions, and they survive and thrive on the advertising pages their publishers sell. Every month, Si would lay out the new issues of all his magazines on his desk and count the advertising pages by hand with one of those nubby rubber fingers that bank tellers once used to count bills.
I had lunch with him every couple of weeks. Like others before me, I learned to prep for the meetings, because he rarely wanted to talk about business. He was much more interested in art and film, and gossip from Washington, Europe, and the West Coast. To have lunch with Si was to be peppered with a lot of questions. When there was a problem to be faced, he used his own, occasionally awkward Socratic method to find a way toward a solution. He took his time when speaking. If you asked him a question, he would formulate his answer slowly, waiting for the right thought and the right words to form in his mind. Newcomers to a conversation with Si would rush into the void as he fermented his replies. Veterans knew to wait. The result was that all of his responses and opinions were measured and well considered. I don’t recall him, in the hundreds of lunches and dinners we shared, ever saying anything rash or ill-informed.
He juggled publishers constantly, but he was stalwart with his editors. I was a pretty wobbly steward of Vanity Fair during my early years at the magazine. But if he had doubts about my abilities during those days—and he had ample reason to worry—he never showed it. He instinctively knew that there is no guidebook to being an editor; success comes only from confidence and a vision that forms over time. Most important, for an editor to thrive, he or she has to be blessed with a comforting and nurturing proprietor. In this respect, Si had no equal.
Most years, during Si and Victoria’s stay in Los Angeles for the Vanity Fair Oscar party, David Geffen would host a dinner in their honor. The other guests generally included Donald and Sue, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, Sue Mengers, Fran Lebowitz, and me and my wife, Anna. One year, Geffen was showing Si around the Beverly Hills house he had bought from the Jack Warner estate. They paused in front of a rectangular Jackson Pollock that hung vertically in the breakfast nook off the kitchen. Si looked at it for a good while and asked where he had gotten it. Geffen turned to him and said, “I bought it from you, Si!” Si looked at it again and then realized that, when he owned it, he had hung the painting horizontally.
For all his wealth and comforts, Si lived life simply and without much in the way of luxury trappings. When the Condé Nast offices were at 350 Madison (between Paul Stuart and Brooks Brothers) we generally had lunch at Brian McNally’s restaurant 44, in the lobby of the Royalton hotel, about three blocks from the office. One day, as we were leaving the restaurant, it started to rain in buckets. I had my best suit on and a new pair of shoes and was resigned to the fact that we would get drenched. Like in a movie, a cab pulled up, discharged its passengers, and lit the on-duty sign. Si and I made a run for it. Just going from the door to the cab, we did indeed get soaked. I told the driver that we were just going a few blocks, but that I would give him $15. He said fine. I suddenly realized I didn’t have any money. Lunch had been on the restaurant’s Condé Nast account. I quietly asked Si if he had any money and he whispered no. So here we were—me and one of the wealthiest men in the country. And not a penny in change between us. When we pulled up in front of the office, I told the driver that if he waited there, I would rush in and get him $15 plus a $5 tip. He thought for a few seconds, then turned around to us and said, “Fine. But the little guy has to stay in the car!”
