John Cowles, Sr.

Biography The son of banker, publisher, and politician Gardner Cowles Sr., John was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University.

In 1922, Cowles launched the Register and Tribune Syndicate.

In 1935, his family acquired the Minneapolis Star; John moved to Minneapolis to manage the paper. Under his leadership, it had the city's highest circulation, pressuring Minneapolis's other newspapers. With his brother Gardner "Mike" Cowles Jr., he was a co-founder of Look magazine, launched in 1937.

To help counteract the agitation against the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s, Cowles served on a committee that included such notables as: Arthur H. Dean, Dean Acheson, Eugene R. Black, James B. Conant, Thomas S. Gates, Roswell Gilpatric, David Rockefeller, and John J. McCloy.

His service on boards included the boards of trustees of the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the boards of directors of the First National Bank of Minneapolis and the Equitable Life Insurance Company of Iowa.

Family He had four children: newspaper publisher Morley Cowles Ballantine; Sarah Cowles Doering; John Cowles Jr., who married the stepdaughter of Cass Canfield, the chairman of Harper & Row; and Russell Cowles.