The Education of a Publisher

LAST Monday, Jared Kushner, the boy publisher of The New York Observer, was nestled in a wingback chair in the book-strewn office of the newspaper’s longtime editor, Peter Kaplan. They were talking about Mr. Kushner’s latest acquisition, the Web site politicsnj.com. “The more stuff he buys,” Mr. Kaplan, said, leaning back, “the happier I am.”
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Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times

CITIZEN KUSHNER The new owner of The New York Observer, Jared Kushner, whose journalism experience was limited to one article in college.

Happiness can take time to grow, both men know. Back in October, when Mr. Kushner invited Mr. Kaplan to a Yankees playoff game three months after buying The Observer, the gray-templed editor, who has been a mentor to waves of young journalists in New York, wasn’t so confident things would work out with his new young boss.

Mr. Kushner, 26, the scion of a troubled New Jersey real estate family, who is also a full-time graduate student, had dabbled in Boston-area condominiums, not publishing, while an undergraduate at Harvard. The sum total of his journalism experience was writing an article about dorm food for a student magazine. In the short time he owned The Observer, Mr. Kushner had found little time even to meet with Mr. Kaplan.

“It was tense,” Mr. Kaplan, 53, recalled of their early relationship. That October night, there was a rain delay of hours. As other fans sought cover in the tunnels of Yankee Stadium, Mr. Kaplan and Mr. Kushner remained in their field-side seats, drinking Bud Lights and talking newspapers. Mr. Kushner told Mr. Kaplan he had been at a game two weeks earlier and sat next to the owner of another New York news media property, and he was astounded at his disdain for his staff.

“I told him,” Mr. Kaplan recalled, “the only way this is going to work is if you love your product, and you understand people are working here because they see something most civilians can’t see about the importance of journalism, and once you’ve got it, you’ll be a great publisher.”

That is just the sort of “Front Page” romanticism Mr. Kaplan has conjured for young reporters over the dozen years he has run The Observer, motivating them to give their all. For the rest of the night, editor and owner drank and talked enthusiastically about the future of the paper. “We needed exactly what we got,” Mr. Kaplan recalled last week. “Three hours of intense conversation in the pouring rain with a lot of beers.” (The game against the Tigers was called because of the weather.)

With The Observer’s transformation four weeks ago from a broadsheet to a tabloid, Mr. Kushner, who professes to be astonished by how much attention he received from purchasing a small Manhattan weekly, has only been more frontally in the spotlight. Dealing with scrutiny is one of many aspects of an unusual on-the-job education he is receiving from Mr. Kaplan, who has called himself the Mr. Chips of New York journalism, greeting each arriving class of boys (and girls), whose youth never changes.

The question for Mr. Kushner, hardly the first rich man to buy a trophy news media property, is whether, after reading the umpteenth gossip item about whom he may be dating, or staring at the 20th quarterly statement of losses, he will drop his trophy as quixotically as he picked it up.

Mr. Kaplan’s challenge is to besot his young publisher with a love of the ink-and-newsprint business before that happens. “It does come down to that Charles Foster Kane line: ‘I think it would be fun to own a newspaper,’ ” Mr. Kaplan said, slightly misquoting “Citizen Kane.” “Young men are supposed to feel that way and I’m thrilled that he does.”

All most people knew about Jared Kushner pre-Observer was that his father, the real estate investor Charles Kushner, had endured a spectacular fall. Once a major donor to New Jersey Democratic politicians, he served nearly a year in prison in part for hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, then showing a tape of the tryst to his sister, who had instigated a tax investigation.

Jared Kushner is the only one of his parents’ four children to work at the family company, where he is a principal. The Kushner Companies owns about 25,000 residential units in the Northeast, as well as the Puck Building in New York. But its biggest deal was the purchase last December of a skyscraper, 666 Fifth Avenue, for $1.8 billion. Start to finish, the deal was negotiated in six days, said Arthur J. Mirante II, president of global client development for Cushman & Wakefield, which brokered the sale.

Although the broker had worked for months with Jared Kushner and his father, who was released from prison in August, it was the younger Mr. Kushner who “carried the ball,” Mr. Mirante said.

Mr. Kushner, who has the demeanor of a preternaturally poised politician, or maybe a missionary, deflects questions about his personal life and his family. He does acknowledge that he is single. “I don’t have time to date,” he said, sitting in his sparse office at The Observer, where he spends most of his workdays, often arriving at 7 a.m. “I have six jobs.”