I’m learning a lot from Newspaperman: S.I. Newhouse and the Business of News by Richard H. Meeker. This biography is about Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr., who founded Advance Publications. His son Samuel “Si” Newhouse Jr. led the company after his father’s death. It’s interesting to compare father and son. They led their family business using very different styles, but both were successful.

One difference that stood out to me was how detail-oriented Sr. was. He was happy to get into the weeds on the business side of his newspaper operation (mostly leaving the editorial side alone). He wanted a weekly report for each newspaper detailing metrics, department by department. He walked through each department weekly checking the operations. He even monitored the cost per page to produce each paper every week. He’d notice if the cost went up a thousandth of a cent and ask why.

I wondered why he was such an operationally focused leader and landed on several possible reasons. When Sr. started in the newspaper business, he had to do everything himself. He learned from the ground up and knew every part of the business inside out. He knew what a smooth-running operation looked like and ensured that all his papers ran smoothly. Sr. also understood that local newspapers weren’t a high-growth business. There were only so many people his local papers could reach. Each daily edition had to turn a profit. Knowing this, he focused on maximizing profitability by watching his costs closely and maximizing advertisements in each newspaper. These factors, combined with growing up in a poor household, likely led to his operationally focused management style.

Jr.’s management style was different. When he ran the family empire, he focused on growing the circulation of magazines, which were distributed more broadly than local newspapers. He was aware of costs, but not to the extent his father had been, and some of his magazines ran unprofitably for years if Jr. saw potential. He didn’t get into the specifics of printing operations; he left that to others. Jr.’s upbringing was also different than his father’s. Because of their dad’s success, Jr. and his brother Donald were raised in luxury and encountered minimal challenges early in life.

Both men led Advance Publications, albeit at different times, and both successfully grew the company—but they went about it in very different ways. I’m curious to learn more about Sr. as I continue reading the biography about him.