Of america, life better connected. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Si newhouse was the legendary chairman of the Media Company conde naste. He died on october 1s at age 89. For a decades newhouse published some of the most recognizable and celebrated magazines anywhere. Among them the new yorker, vogue, gq and vanity fair. Three people who worked with him join me now for a conversation about his legacy. They are david remnick, the editor of the new yorker since 1998 tina brown was editor of vanity fair from 1994 to 1992, edited the new yorker from 9d 2y to 98. Robert gottlieb was editor of the new yorker from 1987 to 1992. Also there for this conversation, donald newhouse, si newhouses brother and business partner. They had a conversation after sis death about his legacy and here is that conversation. This program is about an appreciation of someone that i had the pleasure of knowing. We lived in the same community, in the summer. And to know him was also to know how much he loved his magazines. And how much he loved his editors. So i have asked him to come here, as well as his brother to talk about what made him such a unique kind of leader. But i want to begin with the family. Tell me about your dad, tell me about coming hear as an immigrant and what he did and how it lead to this remarkable media empire. His mother and father were immigrants. They settled in orchard street, 23 orchard street. He was born in 1895 in in the orchard street tenement. I visited it, it now sells Chinese Restaurant equipment. But i have also advice visited the Tenment Museum and it is really an interesting experience. His family moved to bayon, at an early age. My father was the oldest of eight children. His father was some what weak physically and was often not at home. My father was really the father of his seven siblings. His mother was a very strong woman. My father went to law school at a time when you did not have to have a College Degree to go to law school. Could you go right from high school, to law school. He got his degree ang he went with a law firm and the first assignment he was given was to close a newspaper in bankruptcy in new jersey. He went, he saw, he told his employer that he could make more money running the newspaper than he could make closing the newspaper. His employer said you have one month. And he never looked back. Rose what was that newspaper. The bayone times. Rose and followed later by. Later on, he was successful in the bayone times. A paper became available in staten island. He told his employer who was the head of the law firm that he should buy that paper. And my father wanted to buy an interest in it. He could not, he wouldnt buy the paper so my father took money that he was going to spend on his honeymoon and bought the paper. So instead of going on a nice trip to europe, he went to niagara falls. But my mother put up with it. Rose is there a story of the family that he had a chance to buy later the new york yankees, but turned it down in order to by a newspaper in syracuse. The actual fact is that he had a choice of three things. He could have this was in the time when hearst was in very bad financial condition. He could have bought the lancet journal, the Syracuse Herald journal or the yankees and he bought the Syracuse Herald journal. He could have been manage are of the yankees. Rose not the editor of the new yorker. To hell with that. I tell you, after tonight. Rose if the yankees win tonight, wish he had bought the yankees. Bad choice. Rose but then you and si both worked in the family business. Yes. Rose and then magazines came into the picture. Magazines came in in 1957. Before that we had been a newspaper company. Up until 1948 when my father bought a television station in syracuse and began buying television stations. In 57y we had an opportunity to buy a stake in the Public Company which was conde naste which he did buy. And it remained a Public Company for awhile. And then he bought out the stockholders and made it took it private. Rose it is said that si loved magazines. That you were the newspaper guy and he was the magazine guy. Si was working at the star ledger in newark and i was working in jersey city at the time. And when my dad bought conde naste and si begged to go to work for conde naste, my father allowed him to. And he went to work i think for glamor as a sales person. But he had an instinct for magazines. And i was promoted from jersey city to newark. Rose but in his lifetime so he saw actually the rise of magazines and also he saw the coming of the internet age too, and the impact of the digital revolution on magazines. He did. Fortunately much later than he went to work in 57 or 58y in the magazine world and stayed in it and i continued working in the newspaper world. And eventually in cable and cable programming and television. Rose and discovery communications. Discovery became a part of our group, thanks to a very one of my cousins who was in the cable business and had the foresight to join john henrikson. Rose head of discovery. At discovery. Rose let me open this up. You have all worked with si newhouse. What is the legacy . What was it that made him special with respect to magazines . Bob . Well, his passion for them, as donald was saying. He just loved magazines. And for him they were, they were living, organic things. He, they were always in flux which he loved. Flux, change, change, change. Make it better, do this, do that. He said to me on a number of occasions and im sure toth bo of you, if i had my choice of what to do with my life, i would have wanted to be either a film director or a magazine editor. Rose wow. You would have thought he would have had the opportunity to be a magazine but he had us. So he didnt need him. Rose and it is also a sign of his life that he was a quiet and shy man. But he celebrated his editors. I mean he chose people that he thought would have a dominant impact on magazines. In that sense he was rather like. Rose he lived almost through. He was like a hollywood mogul in that sense. He had his stable of editors. And they were his stars. And he loved seeing them thrive. He loved seeing them in the limelight which he didnt want to be. And he loved reinforcing that. It gave him pleasure. It gave him a sense of thrilling accomplishment when one of his editor was being celebrated or the magazine had suddenly taken a huge surge. And he was also very supportive when it wasnt going so well, which is really more important. He was there, he was confident. When i took over the new yorker, it was a very hard battle as it was at the beginning of vanity fair, but i never felt for one second he didnt have my back. Ands was the only person i had to please as far as i was concerned. As long as si felt i was going in the right direction, i felt confident he would stay with it, which he did, of course, both times. And remarkably as we all know, there was never an impulse toward editorial intervention. If he loved something, he would call up excited and say what a great piece or whatever it is. But he never bad mouthed any of us. Never said why dont you do this or do that. That was not his idea. I sold my first piece to the new yorker to box, and then i came to work for tina brown for good after being at the Washington Post for years. And occasionally i would shake hands with this guy, very quiet, at something of tinas usually. But i disn know him as a writer. And tina would occasionally tell us about him. And you got the feeling that 90 of it was true. That the 10 where tina would say and he likes the best stuff, you think that cant possibly be true. No one always likes the best stuff. And then this job fell on my head, in a way. And i started having lunch every couple of weeks if not more often. And in so far as he would ever comment on anything in the magazine, because i really think that by commenting at all, even after publication he thought he was kind of overstepping. That show it wasnt his prerogative. But when he would say i really liked something or something in something, it was always the right thing. It wasnt. Undiscovered jewel, every editor knows the thing that they have quitely that great paragraph, that wonderful headline. Not the noisy thing. We pick that out. And he really did read the magazines cover to cover, and all of them. He also read, you know, glamor and self and gq. Rose tell me about the lunches because grateen has written about the lunches, that he would prep for the lunches. And when we get there, si wanted to talk about art and film and gossip, not about the Business Success of the magazine. The most dramatic lunch i thought i was about to have, was i could come in the new yorker had a rough time economicically for a period. And we finally tipped back too the black thanks to a lot of effort from tina, bob. It is a group thing, it happened. And excitedly, here we are. Thats good, thats good. About a minute of discussion about that. That was it. And then it was off to the races to discuss about the things that he cared about most. Not that im not naive, the man was a businessman too, a very careful businessman who counted ads and you know, really was very mindful of what was going on in these businesses to the last detail. But with his editors, he wanted to encourage above all a sense of the magic. I mean i often thought of him as the wizard of oz in some way. And he was sort of very, he had a lot of wisdom. I didnt often asked, i very rarely asked si what i should publish. But there was one piece that i was very, very sort of worrying me and worrying me. I had lillian ross who you know was under, lillian ross, the great writer of who was on the William Shore new yorker for many years and was also, you know, his mistress for years and years and years. But sean was married so it was kind of the best kept secret in town that she was with sean. And lily and i had become close and she had asked me, you know, for my input to write this piece finally about the big love affair with sean. But it was an uncomfortable thing when the piece came in, that should i publish it in the new yorker or not. And i went back and forth. On one level it was an amazing literary scoop to have the piece and another it was distasteful to have it in seans magazine that he would have hated it being there. Finally i had lunch with si, i said si, this has really been troubling, my piece. I vus dont know. What do you think. And he paused and he said sometimes decisions that are very hard to take just shouldnt be taken. And you know what, i think about it often. I mean sometimes you worry and you worry and you think you know what, there is a liberation from this. He did that for me. A little bit of zen master. Rose you tell the story about there was a time in which you were doing something controversial. Right off the bat, right off the bat. I had an investigative piece about six weeks in that had i didnt know what to do. Yes, understand charlie, i had never been the editor of anything, of anything except for a High School Newspaper. Rose or won anything. Anything, a High School Newspaper called the smoke signal of the high school region. And i had this piece that was accusing everybody of everything. And it was welldocumented, well sourced, lawyered, checkers, all those things that are what the new yorker has available to us, thank god. And i remember it at the Washington Post, my previous experience, that ben bradley, herrorric ben bradley had a rule with cath ryne graham, the propry ter of the Washington Post called the no surprises role am would you call the propry ter and say were going to publish the pentagon papers. I hope thats okay. Or you know there is a watergate scandal going, just so you know. Rose right. And i called si and i said you know, we have this piece. And on the phone he was even more reticent. And it was a long silence at the end of the phone. Really long, like unnervingly long. And he said, finally, um, that sounds very interesting. I look forward to reading it. Rose thats it. That was it, that was the last time i ever called him. Not that we didnt have all kinds of conversations. But i never even sent him the pieces ahead of time, would never dream of doing it. It was for his entertainment on the weekend because you know give him something to read over the weekend it was already being printed. And so that kind of editorial independence which thankfully still exists now, thanks to the newhouse family above allk and thetteos of the place, that existed very, very rarely anywhere in the country or anywhere else in the world. And it also made possible a personal relationship that you could not have had if it worked ot other way. Right. My entire live with si which was extensive had nothing to do with the magazine. It was about movies. Do you remember, do you remember when he used to show movies in his brownstone before they moved. Eight or ten or 12 he would be upstairs threading, putting the film. Rose in the projector. Or about film, books. He was an insane reader. When he bought random house which is how i came in, because i was the head of which was part of random house, his daughter pamela said to me once, you know, i really think he bought random house to justify to himself all the reading that he does anyway and felted giltdee about. Rose let me ask you first, bob, coming to the new yorker, william sean, you cant get more legendary than he wasment how did that transition happen . You coming and then you leaving. Well, my coming, it was some kind of weird thing that took place. Ill start with the first time i met si which must have been the day or the week that he bought random house. And i got a call from Bob Bernstein who was then president of random house saying the new owner is in the building. And i would love you to come down to meet him. And the big Conference Room which was bigger than yankee stadium. So i said sure. Now at that moment i was dressed, im very dressed up for this so you should be honest. I think i was in cabbingis and sneakers and a tshirt and a ratty old sweater. So i went down, exementing, i knew nothing about si. I thought this isoing to be interesting. Because thats what i am, if you didnt like it, i am nothing i can do about it. I so come in there is Bob Bernstein and si, they are alone. And si is sitting there in sneakers, in khakis and even with an even more ratty cardi gan on than i was. I thought this is going to be all right. So then we started to see each other every once in once in a w. He liked my views aboutk boos, about movies, et cetera. So we just would get together. Then he started to want to talk to me about the business which made me very uncomfortable because bon bernstein was my boss and had been a very good friend to me. And those two, they were not made to be together. They were both terrific. But bob, the schmoozer and this and that and si as we know, when its business hes all business. He didnt want to hear the rest of that. So he would be expressing his discomfort with bob to me. And i really didnt know what to do. He made it clear that he would want me to take that joob and i made it clear that that was insanity. Cuz he didnt want me to be deciding how much new warehouse Square Footage we needed in maryland. That was not going to be my strong point. So this went on. Then he started after he bought the new yorker he started asking me about it, because i was a lifelong reader, like everybody. And he started asking me about various people like bill mckibon. He wanted to know about jonathan shell, i didnt know, i knew about three people at the new yorker. One of my closest friends janet mall kz kim and a couple other people. I had no inside knowledge of the new yorker. And i could feel that he was moving toward me, as the potential successor to sean. Though he finally braved it. And said would i be interested . S and of course i was interested because i have been interested in it all my life in the new yorker but also because i was getting really tired at my job. But i said there is no point in discussing this because as long as mr. Sean is there, he cant be replaced. And from everything i know, hes not going to stay kiao baby and walk out the door. So this went on for awhile. And it made me agitatedded and i finally said to him, weve got to stop this discussion. I dont want to hear about it again or think about it again until and if it becomes available. By then you may not want someone my age. Forget it he said great. So it was fabulous. Wonderful. So i dont know, six months, eight, ten months later he called me in my office at lunchtime, since he knew i would be there cuz i dont go out. And he said can i come over and see you. And i said sure. And he rushed in, the most excited i ever saw him and said sean plrks sean has resigned. I said he has. He said yes, yes. And he started to tell me the question sense of events was. And knowing what i few about sean, i wane very convinced that he thought he had resigned 689 and eventually i did speak to mr. Sean about it and his version of what happened was the same as sis except they didnt hear the same thingment because sean said to him, well, mr. Newhouse, you know, he is shy, and passive aggressive, and he said would you mob comfortable if i refired sooner rather than later . And si said he was so he said yes, definitely. And sean said well good, fine, thats fine, good. Si took that to mean im leaving. Sean took it to mean ill go on with these postponements from here to eternity. But by then it was too late. Have i to say that talking to the wife, not really sis strong suit 6789 it was dwight often shall we say a mixed message. What about you. We had the happiest. Rose when he decided that, how did he decide to make a change. It took a long timement for the first couple of years he was happy, every time i would do something remotely dramatic which is not my style, in the magazine, he would be thrilled, et cetera. I could see he was less and less, and then he started to talk to me about changes, not specific changes but what was my view, because im not a magazine perchl i just dont understand magazines the way he does. My feedback, my idea of the new yorker was what is it for me, which was an anthology of good work, so i knew how to put an anthology together every week. But hi no large view or vision about how the magazine should go. And that was making him more and more uncomfortable. Then we spent about an hour walking on the teach in florida. Cuz i was in miami beach. He was where he was. And he was