Publisher and media magnate

Born: November 8 1927;

Died: October 1 2017

SI Newhouse Jr, who has died aged 89, was a billionaire media mogul who ran the parent company of some of the world's most prestigious magazines.

The chairman of Conde Nast since 1975, Newhouse bought and remade The New Yorker and Details magazines and revived Vanity Fair. Other magazines in the Conde Nast stable included Vogue, Wired, Glamour, W, GQ, and Self.

Newhouse was also responsible for another, perhaps more dubious achievement: before selling the Random House book publishing empire, he spotted a magazine profile about a rising young real estate mogul and was inspired to commission the first book of a future president: Donald Trump's The Art Of The Deal.

Newhouse was also known for bringing in Brits Anna Wintour and Tina Brown as editors - they went on to become celebrities in their own right - while abruptly firing staffers who fell from his graces. Grace Mirabella learned she was being axed as editor-in-chief of Vogue in June 1988 when her husband saw it on TV.

Conde Nast under Newhouse was famously extravagant, paying editors huge salaries, throwing lavish parties and rarely sticking to budgets, if budgets existed at all.

Its expense accounts were legendary, with dresses flown from Paris to New York on Concorde and elephants brought in for fashion shoots.

"There's no place on Earth like this," Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter told New York magazine in 2009. "There's no place where you're given the resources you need to do what you want to do and also given complete freedom to do it."

Conde Nast focused on glossy titles that helped set tastes, reached millions of aspirational readers and appealed to upscale advertisers.

"Our magazines represent a certain tone and audience," Newhouse told The New York Times in a rare interview in 1988.

Born at Staten Island, New York, Newhouse dropped out of academia and, after a spell in the air force, started working in the company that his father bought in 1959. Newhouse said the aim was to follow in the tradition of its founder, Conde Montrose Nast. "He invented the form of the specialised magazine. He didn't want a large audience. He wanted one in which everyone counted."

But the company has struggled in recent years with the advertising meltdown. Since 2007 it has closed Gourmet, Cookie, Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, House & Garden, Jane, Men's Vogue, Portfolio, Domino and Golf For Women.

The ambitious business magazine Portfolio folded in April 2009 just two years after its launch, burning through an estimated 100 million dollars.

"Si Newhouse really loved quality content," said his nephew Steven Newhouse, who is the chairman of Advance Publications.

"He was passionate about journalism and he supported journalists and editors and he set an example of caring about the right things in media, which is great stories, great design, great magazines, great websites."