When you think about great publishers of newspapers, you often think of men, however there are a few women which rise to the occasion and dominate. One such lady was Cissy Patterson who life was written about by Amanda Smith in the book Newspaper Titan – The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson published by Alfred Knopf, NY, 2011. In the book half of Cissy’s life it read as one of the ladies who was born to marry and have sons to continue the family business. The family business was newspapers and her grandfather had founded the Chicago Tribune which was the most widely read newspaper in the Midwest. Her grandfather was Joseph Medill who linked the paper to the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln. His daughter married Robert Patterson who became the editor and part owner of the newspaper group. As readers of newspaper we often forget our favorite newspapers have biases, but they do and the newspapers are in the business to make money and some do very well. The Chicago Tribute thrived in the market and the Patterson wealth became part of the 1% in the US which means they had mansions in Chicago, Washington and Newport. At the time of the “robber barons” the Patterson were well familiar with many of them. Cissy lived could have easily been one of the 400 special people in New York but she fell in love with a Count from what became the USSR and had an interesting time in Europe at the time of many Kings and Czars. Counts have the title to land or people in villages paying rents to the landlord, but in all countries not all the land is equally as productive and profitable as others. The Count had a relatively minor holding, but Cissy was in love.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, when Cissy married the Count he was living well beyond his means (had mortgaged the properties a number of times) and was fortunate that Cissy’s family was able to pay a generous allowance or dividends on the stock holdings. The Count was not the best of husbands for a number of reasons (gambling, mistresses were among other vices) and eventually Cissy left him as the family paid him to leave. While this is a person, we all fall in love with a stock or two because of the promise of the future. In many cases, even when we look back at the research which told us to look at other alternatives, we went ahead anyways. Understanding emotion plays a role in our decision-making is a good thing, learning to do it less can ensure we keep more of your money.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.