Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr.
Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr. (1895–1979) was an American newspaper and magazine publisher and the founder of Advance. He bought the Staten Island Advance with a partner in 1922, went on to acquire and merge many newspapers, and in 1959 bought Condé NastCondé NastCondé Nast is a global media company based in New York whose brands include Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ and Wired. It grew out of the publishing business Condé Montrose Nast built after buying Vogue in 1909, was acquired by Samuel I. Newhouse in 1959 and belongs to Advance, the Newhouse family’s private company. After Roger Lynch stepped down as chief executive in September 2026, lead independent director Mike Perlis became interim CEO.Open the full entry for $5 million; the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University is named for him.
Contents7 sections
Key facts
1895Born on the Lower East Side
The New Jersey Hall of Fame notes that Newhouse was born Solomon Isadore Neuhaus in a Lower East Side tenement in Manhattan on May 24, 1895, the eldest son of Meier and Rose Neuhaus, poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe; the family moved to Bayonne, New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the eastern United States on the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by New York State, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with the Hudson River forming its northeastern boundary and the Delaware River its western boundary; its capital is Trenton and its largest city is Newark. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 9,288,994.Open the full entry, when he was a boy. By 13 he had finished high school and become the family breadwinner, working as an office boy for Hyman Lazarus, a Bayonne lawyer and police court judge.[1]
As a Teenager: The Bayonne Times
Asked to close the money-losing Bayonne Times, which Lazarus partly owned, he proposed running it himself, solicited new advertisers, returned it to profitability and was given a share of the ownership. He earned a law degree at night at New Jersey Law School (now Rutgers School of Law) but practiced only briefly, turning instead to buying failing newspapers.[1]
From 1922The Staten Island Advance and Newspaper Expansion
In 1922, using his honeymoon savings, he bought the Staten Island Advance in partnership with Lazarus and within two years was its sole owner, having returned it to profitability. In 1935 he bought the Newark Ledger and four years later the Newark Star Eagle, merging them into the Newark Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest-circulation newspaper; over the next 40 years he acquired papers including the Jersey Journal, The Oregonian, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, The Plain Dealer and newspapers in Syracuse, often buying several papers in one city and merging them.[1]
Advance’s website states that S.I. Newhouse and his family founded the company in 1922 and that it remains a private, family-held business.[2]
1959Buying Condé Nast
In 1959 he bought Vogue and the rest of the Condé Nast portfolio for $5 million as an anniversary present for his wife, who loved Vogue; his elder son, Si Newhouse, went on to run Condé Nast.[3]
1979Death and Legacy
He died in New York City on August 29, 1979. The New Jersey Hall of Fame inducted him in 2012 in its Enterprise category; his legacy includes the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and the S.I. Newhouse Center for Law and Justice at Rutgers School of Law–Newark.[1]
Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts
Advance: the family company he founded; official website: https://www.advance.com/ (opens in a new window).[2]
Condé Nast: Official website: https://www.condenast.com/ (opens in a new window).[4]