Last week, I read Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power, & Glory of America’s Richest Media Empire & the Secretive Man Behind It by Thomas Maier. It was about the Newhouse family’s media empire but mainly focused on Samuel “Si” Newhouse Jr. I enjoyed the book, but I didn’t get a good grasp of the empire’s origin story. I’m also curious about the man who founded the empire, Si’s father Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr.

I decided to learn more about Sr., so I started reading Newspaperman: S.I. Newhouse and the Business of News by Richard H. Meeker. I’m still early in the book, but I already see clear differences between how Jr. and Sr. thought and acted as teenagers and young men. Both were great entrepreneurs, but Sr. had a founder’s and hustler’s mentality as a teen, which led him to found Advance Publications. Jr. didn’t really start to excel in the family business until he was in his 40s.

I’m sure there are way more differences between the two. I’m looking forward to finishing this book to compare the two further and understand how each achieved outsize success leading the same company.