Samuel I. Newhouse acquired the Staten Island Advance in 1922 for ninety-eight thousand dollars, his first wholly owned newspaper. In 1979, the last year of his life, he still owned it, but by then it was the base of operations for what was at that time the nation's second-largest newspaper chain--a term Newhouse would not use. He preferred "our family of newspapers."

His fifty-seven years as a publisher took Newhouse from poverty to the luxury of Park Avenue. He was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side on 24 May 1895, the first son of Meier and Rose Fatt Neuhaus, both Jewish immigrants--he from Russia, she from Austria. The child was given the name Solomon. Not long after his birth the family moved to New Jersey, where the father Anglicized the family name to Newhouse and his given name to Meyer. Young Solomon began using the name Sammy.

Newhouse finished public grade school...