Staten Island Advance

Sam Newhouse ran a $1B media empire from a briefcase, with no execs

Samuel Newhouse dropped out at 13 to support his family, turned around a small newspaper by 17, and then bought a new paper about every three years for six decades, building Advance Publications. Even at $1B in revenue he had no office, no partners and no executive team. He did handshake deals and drove from paper to paper to check on his publishers.

“But what's interesting is this little guy named Sam Newhouse. He never had an office. He worked out of a briefcase. All he had was a briefcase. Most of the deals that he did was handshake agreements. He had zero partners. He had zero executive management team. And by the time the company was doing $1 billion in revenue, it was literally just him, like just him making these decisions.”