Donald Newhouse saw the internet coming in 2004. His newspapers still weren’t ready

Donald E. Newhouse, president of one of the largest family-controlled publishing companies in the nation and a former board chairman of The Associated Press, died Tuesday. He was 96 and died at his home in New Jersey, his family said. During his career, Newhouse served as president of the Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, and head of Advance Publications’ newspaper group, which he navigated into the internet age. “You reveled in his company. He filled you with energy and humor when you felt doubtful and weak,” Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and Conde Nast’s chief content officer, said in an obituary released Tuesday night by the Newhouse family. Newhouse, who lived in New York, spent nearly 50 years overseeing the 35 newspapers of Advance Publications, the media business started by his late father, Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr., in 1922. His older brother, S.I. Newhouse Jr., was chairman of the company and oversaw Conde Nast magazines. He died in 2017. Louis D. Boccardi, retired president and CEO of the AP, said Newhouse was an extraordinary chairman for the cooperative. “His voice was never the loudest in the room, but it was often the wisest,” Boccardi said. Newhouse was instinctively private, but behind that, Boccardi said, was a generous man, at home anywhere and curious about everything. “He could come across as self-effacing and deferential, but in Don’s skilled hands those were qualities that made him an enormously strong and effective leader,” Boccardi said. A man who didn’t chase the spotlight Newhouse, born in 1929, was known for staying out of the public eye. A reporter once asked him to list the biggest chances he took in his career. The answer: “Inviting your questions.” The usually reserved Newhouse did step into the spotlight when he took on the role of chairman of the Newspaper Association of America from 1993 to 1994 and then chairman of the AP board of directors from 1997 to 2002. He had served on the AP