Citizen Newhouse
Portrait of a Media Merchant
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- $30.99
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
An acclaimed biographer takes on one of the world's most elusive media moguls in Citizen Newhouse. The harvest of four years and over 400 interviews, Carol Felsenthal's book is an unauthorized investigative biography that paints a tough yet even-handed portrait.
Here is the father, Sam Newhouse, who developed a formula for creating newspaper monopolies in small metropolitan markets and turned it into a huge family fortune. And the sons: Si in the magazine business, with his crown jewels, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, and Donald, who runs the family's newspaper and cable television companies.
Focusing on Si's life and career, Citizen Newhouse takes the measure of one of America's most powerful yet unexamined figures. Felsenthal shows how Si's quirky behavior as a shy and awkward outsider has had a far-reaching impact on the properties he owns, affecting—and in the opinion of some, compromising—the quality of the Newhouse "product" across the country and the world. Felsenthal shines a light on the breathtaking changes that have taken place among Si’s top editors, and the fabulous perks available to members of this elite. She also lays bare the role played by Roy Cohn in the affairs of both father and son.
Citizen Newhouse provides a fascinating account of powerful and glamorous lives—and their impact on the newspapers and magazines we read every day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally under contract to Viking, this searing biography of media titan Si Newhouse was canceled, claims Felsenthal Power, Privilege and the Post) in her introduction, by Penguin Putnam chief Phyllis Grann because a friend of Grann's appears on almost every page. To be sure, Felsenthal's work is filled with unflattering descriptions of the men and women found in the top circles of New York's magazine and book publishing scene. She begins, however, with a lengthy history of the media empire--Advance Communications--assembled by Newhouse's father, Sam, a self-made newspaper tycoon born on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The elder Newhouse added Conde Nast to his holdings in 1959; it was these magazines that drew the attention of the younger Newhouse, who, after Sam's death in 1979, left the running of the newspapers to his younger brother, Donald. As Felsenthal charts Newhouse's rising influence in the world of publishing, particularly through his acquisitions of Random House and the New Yorker--trophy companies, she says, meant to increase his prestige among the media elite--she denounces his business style, reporting that under Newhouse's ownership the quality of both the publishing house and the magazine declined dramatically, as did their profitability. It is Advance's newspaper and cable holdings, she contends, that prop up Newhouse's side of the business. Felsenthal misses little in documenting the many hirings and firings that have taken place under Newhouse. Publishing insiders won't learn much here (indeed, most of her financial reporting comes from the Wall Street Journal and other secondary sources), but other readers will find her narrative brimming with dishy suspense. Felsenthal leaves little doubt about what she thinks of Newhouse and his top aides: she calls Alberto Vitale "vile" and Newhouse himself "vacuous and self-indulgent," comparing him unfavorably to William Randolph Hearst and Rupert Murdoch. This undisguised contempt for her subject blunts what is otherwise an often penetrating look at the Machiavellian politics that lie just beneath the ultra-sleek facade of the Newhouse empire. Pictures not seen by PW.
