Cowles Family

Cowles family, publishing family known for Look and other mass magazines popular in the mid-20th century and for the newspapers it developed in two important regions of the United States.

John Cowles (b. December 14, 1898, Algona, Iowa, U.S.—d. February 25, 1983, Minneapolis, Minnesota) was the son of Gardner Cowles, Sr., a small-town banker who bought the Des Moines Register and Leader, the weakest of three daily papers in the Iowa metropolis. John attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University, where he earned an A.B. degree in 1921. He went home to work on what through a merger had become the Register and Tribune, starting in the advertising department and moving on through a wide variety of jobs to learn the trade, finally becoming general manager. In the 1930s and ’40s John served on the board of directors of the Associated Press, and he also held the position of president of the Audit Bureau of Circulations for four years. John and his brother Mike persuaded their father to approve their purchase of The Minneapolis Star, which was at the time in financial difficulties, and in 1937 John moved to Minneapolis to manage it. He later bought the Minneapolis Tribune. Active in government affairs, John was a member of the General Advisory Committee of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1962 to 1969.

Gardner Cowles, Jr., called Mike (b. January 31, 1903, Algona, Iowa, U.S.—d. July 8, 1985, Southampton, New York), followed his brother John to Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University, where he edited the Harvard Crimson. Upon his graduation in 1925, he went home to Des Moines to be city editor of the Register and Tribune. The next year he became news editor and then moved up gradually to become executive editor in 1931. During his tenure the paper came to be the dominant daily in the entire state of Iowa. In 1937 Gardner founded Look magazine, which he operated from Des Moines until 1941, when he moved it to New York. The magazine gave Henry Luce’s Life significant competition, but increasing production and distribution costs and competition from television forced its suspension despite healthy circulation in the 1960s. Gardner was editor in chief and chairman of the board of Cowles Communications from 1937 to 1971.

Fleur Fenton Cowles (b. January 20, 1908, New York City, New York, U.S.—d. June 5, 2009, Sussex, England) was married to Gardner Cowles, Jr., from 1946 to 1956, and during the marriage she was active in the affairs of Cowles Publications. She had previously been an advertising writer and set up her own business. She wrote a weekly column in the New York World-Telegram and did some work for Look. Her influence led to the introduction of two short-lived magazines, Quick (1949) and Flair (1950–51). In 1996 her autobiography, She Made Friends and Kept Them, was published.

John Cowles, Jr. (b. May 27, 1929, Des Moines, Iowa, U.S.—d. March 17, 2012, Minneapolis, Minnesota), followed the family pattern of attending Phillips Exeter and Harvard, where he graduated in 1951. In 1953 he joined the Minneapolis Star and the Minneapolis Tribune, acquired by his father. He became editor in 1961 and was chairman from 1973 to 1979, resuming active control again in 1982. A recession in the early 1980s forced the merger of the Star and Tribune into one paper. Further losses led to John’s ouster as president and publisher in 1983.