Si Newhouse Jr. is 80 years old and not half as cranky as Graydon Carter, the 59-year-old editor he hired in 1992 to helm Vanity Fair. Newhouse is in good health, good spirits, and good company. He's never been one to so boldly criticize an editor to his face; he simply has him fired when his missteps number too many. Though he publishes a magazine that dictates how the fashion industry moves month-to-month, he wears a sweatshirt to work. Newhouse has his table at Conde Nast's cafeteria — its the one on the right, by the registers — and selected it by happenstance. While he counts the number of ad pages in a magazine by himself, by hand, he does not make a big fuss over whether your magazine makes any money; Vanity Fair and The New Yorker have padded his pockets for fewer years than they bled them. And speaking of bottom lines, the fleet of towncars waiting outside 4 Times Square is not an extraneous expense, but an accepted cost of doing business.

So he sounds like the docile grandpa any editor would be lucky to call boss, then, wouldn't he?

Perhaps. They're just afraid he'll cut them out of the will.

A striking thing about Condé is that people who leave — even those who departed in frustration or felt that they were mistreated — are reluctant to speak ill of the company or the boss. Whether this reflects fear, respect or a lingering hope of being invited back into the gilded fold, one can only guess.

[NYT]