Remembering Donald Newhouse
If the contemporary media scene has proved anything of late, it is that a reliably supportive proprietor is as rare as a cool breeze in August. The political and financial costs of backing journalism that challenges the honesty or the competence of the powerful can be distinctly . . . inconvenient. Some owners show their mettle for a spell, then find adequate reason to knuckle under; others have no intention of even pretending to do what is hard or what is right. Donald Newhouse, who died last week, at the age of ninety-six, was among the exceptions. He understood the value of editorial independence. For decades, he was a stalwart supporter of the many publications owned by the Newhouse family, including The New Yorker.
Donald and his older brother, S. I. Newhouse, Jr., who died in 2017, were born to a newspaper family. Their father created an empire of print that began in earnest with the purchase of the Staten Island Advance, in 1922, then extended to Newark, Cleveland, New Orleans, Portland, and many places beyond; in 1959, he bought Condé Nast, a struggling enterprise in those days which was anchored mainly by Vogue. It may be difficult in the current era to imagine what it once was to have a passion for newspapers. Donald and Si’s father was so enamored of newsprint that he spurned a chance to buy the New York Yankees and purchased newspapers in the Syracuse area instead.
Both Donald and Si attended Syracuse University for a while but leaped impatiently into the family business well before graduation. The brothers were close, trading confidences all week long, then meeting for dinner on Sunday nights at Sette Mezzo, an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. Together, over the years, they steadily expanded the family’s privately owned company.
Donald and Si were in some ways distinctly different. Si, who ran Condé Nast as his primary business passion, was, despite his innate shyness, a high-profile figure in New York, a risk-taking publisher, who pursued the unlikely revival of Vanity Fair, and the acquisition of The New Yorker from the Fleischmann family, in 1985, largely because of his love for magazines. Donald was immersed in newspapers, not only the editorial process but also the stuff of print—typesetting, the quality of ink, the various grades of paper. While Si worked in Manhattan, Donald spent much of his time in Newark, at the offices of the Star-Ledger. Both men arrived at work hours before anyone else. As his editors knew, the best way to reach Donald was to call him at the office at around five or six in the morning. Under Donald, the family’s newspapers won numerous Pulitzer Prizes. The Patriot-News, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, won for local reporting, in 2012, after it broke the Jerry Sandusky sexual-abuse scandal at Penn State; the Times-Picayune, in New Orleans, won for both public service and breaking-news reporting, in 2006, for its online and print coverage of Hurricane Katrina; and, between 2001 and 2011, the Star-Ledger won three times.
Donald Newhouse was an unpretentious, even joyful, personality, the rare person of great means who knew how lucky he was while never thinking he was better than anyone less fortunate. Into his eighties and nineties, he enjoyed three-mile-long walks and ocean sailing with his family. And yet he knew profound grief as well, losing both his brother, Si, and his wife, Susan, to dementia. After Susan Newhouse died, in 2015, Donald became an active and generous supporter of the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, which is devoted to finding a cure for the disease and lending support to caregivers. At an annual fund-raising dinner called Hope Rising, he would always close the proceedings by joining one Broadway singer or another in a version of Eddie Cantor’s “If You Knew Susie (Like I Know Susie)”––an unabashed show of love and devotion.
Donald Newhouse spent his last days at his home in New Jersey, surrounded by his family, and is survived by his sons, Steven and Michael, and his daughter, Katherine Mele, their spouses, and six grandchildren. He also got to see his first great-grandchild, Zev. That, too, was part of his great good fortune. ♦