Sidney Harman, chairman of Newsweek and the Daily Beast, has died. He was 92.
Harman died of "complications from acute myeloid leukemia at the young age of almost 93," his family said in a statement. "He died in Washington, D.C., a city he loved and supported in so many ways, surrounded by his wife and children."
Funeral arrangements will be private, the family said, adding: "Celebrations of Sidney's extraordinary life will be held both in Washington and Los Angeles, at dates still to be determined."
Harman learned he faced the illness last month and remained "vigorously engaged" as executive chairman of Newsweek Daily Beast Company and chairman of the Academy for Polymathic Study at the University of Southern California.
The audio equipment magnate and husband of husband of Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) bought Newsweek from the Washington Post Company last year for one dollar plus the assumption of its $47 million debt.
Also read: Will Sidney Harman’s Family Continue to Support Newsweek Now That He's Gone?
Harman then merged the struggling newsweekly with Barry Diller and Tina Brown's Daily Beast in November. “In an admittedly challenging time," he said then, "this merger provides the ideal combination of established journalism authority and bright, bristling website savvy."
Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, who left the company last week, remembered Harman in a Daily Beast post on Wednesday:
He strode quickly into a room, tanned and fit, offered a firm mogul handshake like a man decades younger. With a near-photographic memory, he dazzled dinner parties and meetings of editors by reciting long passages from Shakespeare, Tennyson and long-forgotten essayists, all of which had some genuine wisdom to impart.
Added Alter: "He saved Newsweek, hired Tina Brown as editor and told me just last week that the magazine was on track to break even. When he died April 12 after a brief battle with leukemia, it came as a shock. He was 92 and expected to live past 100. We all believed him."