The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Tributes paid to US media mogul SI Newhouse Jr, aged 89
SI Newhouse Jr, the low-profile billionaire media mogul who ran the parent company of some of the United States’ most prestigious magazines, has died aged 89.
Mr Newhouse’s death was confirmed by his family, who said he died at his New York home.
The chairman of Conde Nast since 1975, Si Newhouse, as he was known, bought and remade The New Yorker and Details magazines and revived Vanity Fair.
Other magazines in the Conde Nast stable included Vogue, Wired, Glamour, W, GQ and Self.
“Si Newhouse really loved quality content,” said his nephew Steven Newhouse, who is the chairman of Advance Publications.
“He was passionate about journalism and he supported journalists and editors and he set an example of caring about the right things in media, which is great stories, great design, great magazines, great websites.”
Before selling the Random House book publishing empire, he spotted a magazine profile about a rising young real estate mogul and was inspired to commission the first book of a future president, Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal.
Mr Newhouse brought in buzz-obsessed Britons Anna Wintour and Tina Brown as editors, who became celebrities in their own right, while abruptly firing staffers who fell from his graces.
Grace Mirabella learned she was being axed as editor-in-chief of Vogue in June 1988 when her husband saw it on TV.
Conde Nast under Mr Newhouse was famously extravagant, paying editors huge salaries, throwing lavish parties and rarely sticking to budgets, if budgets existed at all.
Its expense accounts were legendary, with dresses flown from Paris to New York on Concorde and elephants brought in to menace models at fashion shoots.
Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter told New York magazine in 2009: “There’s no place where you’re given the resources you need to do what you want to do and also given complete freedom to do it.”
Conde Nast focused on glossy titles that helped set the nation’s tastes, reached millions of aspirational readers and appealed to upscale advertisers.
But the company has struggled in recent years with the advertising meltdown.