Echoes of Kane as tycoon's son buys newspaper

Jared Kushner is not yet a Rupert Murdoch, nor, for that matter, a Randolph Hearst, but at just 25 years old and still enrolled in university, he has emerged as the surprise buyer of one of Manhattan's most prized and beloved media properties: the influential, if loss-making, New York Observer.

Comparisons with Citizen Kane, the fictional newspaper publisher played on screen by Orson Welles who may or may not have been inspired by Mr Hearst, are premature. When the young Kane took over the New York Inquirer, he had barely begun to explore the full span of his ambitions. What Mr Kushner imagines for himself in the future, only he might know.

The announcement may have disappointed those fascinated by the rumours of recent weeks that the newspaper's founder and long-time publisher, Arthur Carter, was poised to make a sale to New York's own favourite actor, Robert De Niro, and his partners in Tribeca Films. Those talks fell through this summer.

But the Kushner name is also familiar to most New Yorkers, thanks to the life and times - some recently spent behind bars - of Jared's father, Charles Kushner, who built a property empire in nearby New Jersey and became a prominent contributor to the Democratic Party.

The elder Kushner's star fell in 2004 when he pleaded guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, illegal campaign donations and witness tampering, stemming from his ties to New Jersey's ex-governor, James McGreevey. Among the more tawdry details of the Kushner affair was the revelation that he had hired a prostitute for his brother-in-law and sent a videotape of the liaison to his sister to punish her for co-operating with federal investigators. He was jailed for 18 months and fined half a million dollars.

None of this history has dented the enthusiasm of his son, however, for the purchase. The money - $10m (£5.3m) - reportedly comes not from his dad but from his own pocket. Jared earned his first millions buying and selling properties in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while an undergraduate at Harvard.

Observer staff members came to work yesterday to find an e-mail from Jared, declaring: "At 25 and with only non-publishing related business experience, I am now equipped with two of the finest tools that a publisher could ever have; this fine staff, and the inquisitive energy needed to tackle convention."

Founded and published for two decades by Arthur Carter, the newspaper has a small circulation of around 50,000 that belies its importance in New York. With its broadsheet format and pink pages, it has long been a must-read for members of New York's social, media, literary and political circles.

The challenges for the paper are real, however. With its witty and irreverent style and its niche-reporting, the paper should have translated easily into an online version. But it has been slow in embracing the internet. It is also, by most recent estimates, losing around $2m a year.

The newspaper's editor, Peter Kaplan, who will stay on, insists he and Mr Carter could not be happier. "Arthur was thrilled to find him, because he felt that Jared was a younger version of himself," Mr Kaplan said. "He's part of a new wave of newspaper owners. He's not going to be weighed down by conventional wisdom."

For now, at least, Mr Kushner, is presenting himself in most un-Kane-like fashion, pledging to leave all alone, editorially. "It's very simple," he told The New York Times. "The second I play with the toy, it breaks."