The Press: Deal in Denver

Into Denver's mile-high sunshine last week stepped the fastest-growing newspaper publisher in the U.S. In one hand he carried a battered 13-year-old briefcase bulging with the blueprints of a big deal. Within 24 hours Publisher Samuel I. Newhouse, 65, left Denver with what he had come for: a 15% cut of the Denver Post (circ. 256,513), plus definite expectations of ultimately gaining full control.

Newhouse is a publisher who has devoted himself less to the profession of journalism than to the buying of newspapers as business properties. Beginning with the Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance in...