Si Newhouse—who passed away this weekend at the age of 89—was the legendary chairman of Condé Nast, the media company that owns and operates magazines and websites like Glamour, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and GQ, among many others. Si was also one of the architects of modern culture, and a man whose belief in vision helped craft today’s media landscape. He also gave me two major career breaks, and for that I’ll always be grateful.
The first was as the editor of Self, and I remember preparing to meet him for my job interview with one part click-my-heels excitement and two parts blind terror. Our contact prior to then had consisted of two (yes, I had counted) elevator hellos, and as a junior editor I definitely didn’t run in the same social circles as him. I asked a former executive of the company, a woman who had retired but knew Si well, for interview advice. She filled me with confidence. “You know,” she said, “Si loves to take a flier on a young person with passion.” (I know those were her exact words, because I remember not being sure what a “flier” was.)
She was right. Si was an unpretentious man in a New Yorker sweatshirt, but what really put me at ease was his deep and authentic interest in editorial vision. I worried that this proprietor of an expansive, elite empire would grill me either on my A-list connections (questionable) or business skills (zilch). But instead, he wanted to talk about storytelling and subjects. What would I do with the cover? What did I think fitness meant these days? Did I like the logo? Did I think sex belonged in Self? (Yes, I said, and he chuckled.) I left the meeting having no clue whether I’d gotten the job but thinking: Man, that guy really loves what we do.
What really put me at ease was his deep and authentic interest in editorial vision.
That interview told me everything I needed to know about Si. He loved magazines—particularly those that took risks—and he pushed editors to have strong points of view. He was unfailingly interested in the details of actual editing: Why that headline? How’d you get that photo? Why the exclamation point instead of a period? (While looking at one of my first issues, Si circled the number of exclamation points I’d used—what can I say, I was enthusiastic!—and gently encouraged me to keep an eye on my energy.)
Make no mistake: As the chairman of Conde Nast, Si commanded a vast business enterprise and steered it through transitions big and small. And he certainly cared fiercely about success (I remember once hearing Art Cooper, the late editor of GQ, joke that “I have known terror: I have had lunch with Si Newhouse when my newsstand sales were down”). But over all the years I worked for him, over my time at Self and my second assignment here at Glamour, his appetite for stories, photos, films—what’s now called “content,” though never, to my knowledge, by Si—is what made him so unique, and what pushed those of us who worked for him to try to raise our games.
His appetite for stories, photos, films—what’s now called ‘content’—is what made him so unique, and what pushed those of us who worked for him to raise our games.
He found meaning in all his titles, but you wouldn’t assume Glamour, a brand aimed at women in their 20s and 30s, would have personal appeal for him. I always found it remarkable that he could get as excited about, say, college dating trends or workout phenomena as he did about politics or art. My staff loved that, until recently, he attended every Glamour Women of the Year awards ceremony, often offering a spirited typed-up recap the next morning. And like many other editors, I’m pretty sure that I’ve somewhere saved a cache of the little cards he’d write in felt-tip pen, sometimes around Christmas, but sometimes just because he’d read a story he liked or seen a headline he thought was clever.
In other words: He loved what he did. He can’t be replaced, but we can all try to live up to his ideas. Thanks for taking a flier on so many of us, Si.
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