The Press: The Newspaper Collector Samuel Newhouse

(10 of 10)

meticulous politeness Sam Newhouse does not quite conceal an oversupply of nervous energy. He characteristically sits on the edge of a chair; and he has the attitude of a man who is just about to dash for a train. He is a chronic door opener and reacher-for-the-check. He generally keeps several $100 bills in his wallet so that he can pay cash for the dinner tab wherever he eats.

Once a year the Newhouses fly to Europe, where Mitzi, in her new capacity as wife of the proprietor of Conde Nast, makes the rounds of the fashion houses and takes a certain satisfaction in the fact that the arbiters of style now employ models in her size (which is 3). Within three weeks her husband is bored, and they go home.

The Habit. Newhouse himself has difficulty articulating his purpose in life. He just goes on buying newspapers, simply because that is what he has been doing most of his life. Whatever his motives, the pyramid he built is in no danger of demolition. To perpetuate it, Newhouse established a charitable foundation in 1945 whose ten shares of voting stock will go equally, on his death, to his two sons. "I'm very hardboiled about the boys," Newhouse says. "I've built this thing up and I'm not going to let it go to pieces."

That at least seems certain. A chronic insomniac, who props his head on three down pillows, Newhouse spends the dark hours looking back over 40 years and ahead to however many years are left. "I just toss and wonder what paper I'll buy tomorrow," he says. "I'm not tired. But the nights are awfully long."

*Second biggest deal: in 1959, Chicago Sun-Times Publisher Marshall Field Jr. paid $24,064,650 for the Chicago Daily News. Newhouse actually paid $43,500,000 for New Orleans ($1,500,000 in brokers' fees), but since the deal included $10,500,000 in negotiable U.S. Government securities owned by the papers, his net cost was $33 million.