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Good, Bad, Indifferent. Still, Newhouse is vulnerable to valid criticism. If he has not debased the quality of U.S. journalism, he has not notably improved it either. Most of his papers are editorial ly as good, bad or indifferent as when he bought them. The Portland Oregonian, which won a Pulitzer Prize before Newhouse took it over, has since won another. The merits of the Staten Island Advance were negligible in 1922, and still are. One notable exception is the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, which has vastly im proved since Newhouse picked it up for $6,250,000 in 1955. The directly responsi ble party, however, is not Sam, but Pub lisher Richard H. Amberg, whom Newhouse sent down from Syracuse.
A man with Chamber of Commerce en thusiasms, Amberg took over a paper that, in his words, was a "bowl of Jell-0," and gave it both form and a vivid personality. Today, the once loftily global-minded Post-Dispatch is fully aware that it has a home town competitor.
Fact is, Monopolist Sam Newhouse has probably done journalism more good than harm. Along with his intrusion into a city, for example, goes the pledge, implied but never yet broken, that the papers he buys will stay alive — and healthy. "When I bought the Advance," says Newhouse, "there were two papers in Staten Island, five in Queens. Now the only papers in those places are the three that I own. I've got more circulation around New York—765,000—than the New York Times. Harrisburg and Syracuse were sick papers—they would have folded. Newark was in bankruptcy. St. Louis was offered to Ridder and to Jack Knight [of the Knight newspaper group], and they turned it down. If I hadn't bought it, St. Louis would be a one-newspaper town. What is the measure of what is good for the newspaper business?"
The Capitalist. Long years of experience, together with some coaching from the public-relations firm he hired after buying Portland, have taught Newhouse to project a better image in public. But he does not understand his antagonists. He is basically an uncomplicated man, whose reasons for acquiring new properties can sometimes sound whimsical ("I was attracted to it"). He bought Condé Nast mostly as a 35th wedding anniversary present for his wife Mitzi, who attended New York's Parsons School of Design and lives in a whirl of high fashion. "Sam Newhouse never pretended to be a public benefactor," says Phil Hochstein. "He doesn't claim to be with the people. He's a capitalist." Brother Ted has said that Newhouse's business could just as easily have been shoe factories, and in confessional moments Sam agrees.
Capitalist Newhouse rules his barony with deceptive informality. He has no office in any of his plants; that function is filled by a thick briefcase packed with what Newhouse calls "problems"—unfinished business. He keeps track of his assorted properties by