Different parents have different lessons to pass on to their progeny. Our dad tried to impress upon us the importance of contributing to humanity by becoming a doctor, so please feel free to share your medical woes in the comments and we will do our best to advise based on a summer spent autoclaving lab equipment. Soon-to-be Newsweek owner Sidney Harman had a slightly different worldview to pass down to his son Daniel, namely that it’s always a good time to exercise your cash-given right to nepotism. While staffers nervously await the news on which 30 percent of them will be getting pink slips this Friday, some received a memo last week that Harman’s son, a twentysomething second-year MBA student at Columbia, would be jumping onboard for an internship in digital products. Daniel doesn’t have publishing experience, but he was involved with a sports-cars accessories business called Harman Motive. (No relation, probably.)
For staffers without door-opening last names like Meacham, Zakaria, and Fineman, the memo may have seemed ill-timed. “There was a lot of eye-rolling,” an unnamed source told the Post.
Papa Harman, who probably figured a measly internship in exchange for taking on Newsweek’s $70 million debt was no big deal, said his son was hardly an heir apparent: “I don’t think it will create any problems, because his dad is a decent, gentle, humane person and Dan is a gracious, respectful young man.”
