Biography
Advance Publications, Inc. is a privately held American media conglomerate controlled by the Newhouse family. Its origins trace to 1922, when Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr. acquired a 51 percent controlling interest in the Staten Island Advance newspaper for roughly $98,000, in partnership with Judge Hyman Lazarus. Incorporated in 1924 as the Staten Island Advance Company, the operation became the foundation of a sprawling publishing empire. By Newhouse's death in 1979, the company owned the third-largest newspaper chain in the United States, with combined circulation exceeding three million, alongside dozens of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, and cable systems. The company is named after that first paper and remains controlled by the families of Donald Newhouse and Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr.
Advance owns Condé Nast, the magazine publisher behind titles including Vogue, The New Yorker, and Wired. It was through Condé Nast that Advance became connected to Reddit: in 2006, Condé Nast acquired the young link-sharing startup, reportedly for around $10 million. The acquisition placed Reddit under the umbrella of one of America's largest privately held media groups, an unusual pairing of a buttoned-up magazine publisher with a freewheeling internet message board.
When Reddit was spun out of Condé Nast in 2011 to operate as an independent subsidiary of Advance, the parent company retained the largest ownership position in the business. Advance continued to hold this stake through Reddit's years of growth, funding rounds, and management changes, remaining the single most significant shareholder as the platform expanded into one of the most-visited sites on the internet.
That long-held position produced an enormous return at Reddit's March 2024 initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Press coverage estimated the Newhouse family's windfall at roughly $1.4 billion at the IPO price, with later reporting placing the value of Advance's stake at close to $2 billion. Through Advance, the Newhouse family emerged as Reddit's largest shareholder, reported to control roughly a third of the voting power of the company's outstanding stock. The outcome underscored how a modest mid-2000s bet by a legacy print empire became one of the most lucrative investments in modern media.