The Press: The Newspaper Collector Samuel Newhouse

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knows nothing about the editorial end of journalism, and cares even less. To him, newspapers are "properties," usually identified by locale. "I just bought New Orleans," he told a friend after his Southern coup. Newhouse once had a chance to buy Israel's Jerusalem Post, but turned it down—thereby sparing his friends the observation, "I just bought Jerusalem." His properties are valued not by content but by readership. "It's a great paper," said Newhouse, after buying a minority interest in the Denver Post two years ago. "It has a circulation of 250,000." When he is moved to talk about the printed matter in his papers, Newhouse sounds like an atheist discussing the relative merits of Christianity and Buddhism.

In the strict sense, Newhouse does not publish newspapers, or even run them; he merely collects them, leaving editorial policy to the executive hands he inherited when he bought out their previous employers. "How do you want to operate?" Newhouse asked Jack Langhorne, publisher of the Huntsville, Ala., Times, after buying that paper in 1955. "Just like we've been operating," Langhorne replied. "O.K., Jack," said Newhouse. "You run it." It was the last command from Newhouse that Langhorne ever got.

All of Newhouse's editors and publishers enjoy the same unfettered freedom, and all of them exercise it at will. The boss never compliments an editor or reporter—lest silence the next time be construed as censure. Newhouse's name appears on the masthead of only three of the 19 papers. He rarely reads any of them; the only paper delivered daily to his 14-room Park Avenue duplex in Manhattan is one he does not own (but wishes he did): the New York Times. Newhouse papers disagree not only with one another but with the proprietor. Newhouse himself favors integration, but not to the point of rebuking the publisher of his Birmingham, Ala., paper, the News, which is rabidly racist. A registered Democrat, Newhouse voted for Kennedy in 1960; eight of his papers endorsed Nixon.

Newhouse takes a special pride in the truculence of Syracuse Her aid-Journal Editor Alexander ("Casey") Jones, whose editorial positions rarely jibe with the boss's. Newhouse is partial to New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller ("The type you want in politics"), and on a recent visit to Syracuse he asked for Casey's opinion of Rocky's general performance. "I think it's silly," said Casey. "Oh, that's interesting," said Casey's employer mildly —and abandoned the subject.

"My Passion, My Delight." However gratifying Sam's laissez-faire attitude may be to his editors and publishers, outsiders either find it confusing or don't believe that it exists. The conventional picture of a chain publisher is of a man who uses his papers like a megaphone to extend the range of his own voice. Because Newhouse does not take a public stand on the issues of the day, because he does not force his personal convictions into his papers, because he has no interest more consuming than the solvency of his properties—and because he automatically becomes an "outsider" wherever he buys—he is frequently treated with suspicion and downright hostility. Upon learning that the New Orleans