Newhouse focused on purchasing bargain-priced papers in growing communities. He had no interest in starting new papers or in unrelated ventures, even declining an offer to purchase the New York Yankees. He typically acquired a city's oldest newspaper and then purchased the city's second newspaper, thereby allowing him to set advertising rates.[citation needed] Although he generally promised to keep both papers in business and in competition, he typically merged the two, generally closing the afternoon paper and keeping the morning, effectively establishing a monopoly, then used the profits to purchase additional newspapers.[3]

Newhouse largely ran his various interests out of a brown leather briefcase and kept key figures in his head, even as his acquisitions grew into an empire of 20 newspapers, as well as numerous magazines, radio stations and television stations. He never had what could be called a formal headquarters; for many years, Advance Publications' corporate address was the same as that of the Staten Island Advance.[