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A Venerable Newsweekly Changes Its Stripes
Richard Stengel, Time’s new managing editor, wants the magazine to have a sharper point of view.
By JULIE BOSMAN
For most of the 20th century, under the influence of its founder, Henry R. Luce, Time magazine spoke in a single authoritative voice that reflected the world back to its readers.
Now Richard Stengel, the new managing editor of Time, wants to change the metaphor.
“We’ve traditionally been a mirror, and to me, we more and more have to be a lamp,” Mr. Stengel said, invoking the title of the study of Romantic literature by M. H. Abrams. “As a lamp, you’re shining a light on something.”
Mr. Stengel’s plan is to fill the pages of Time with more essays and news analysis, give the magazine a sharper point of view and draw more brand-name journalists into the fold. If this sounds familiar, it may be that Mr. Stengel wants Time to be little more like its chief rival, Newsweek, which already has a star roster of essayists like George Will, Anna Quindlen and Fareed Zakaria.
So far, Mr. Stengel has drawn attention to the magazine by hiring Ana Marie Cox, a writer known less for her journalistic chops than for her previous job writing heavily opinionated posts on the gossip blog Wonkette. He has also highlighted articles that are largely reported essays, like the cover story about the Middle East in the July 31 issue, “The Way Out,” by Michael Elliott. “It’s about having an idea that is different,” Mr. Stengel said. “I want to have people talk about what we’re writing about.”
As Mr. Stengel tries to shake up Time, Newsweek is undergoing a shake-up of its own. Tomorrow, the magazine is expected to confirm reports that its managing editor and heir apparent, Jon Meacham, will succeed the magazine’s longtime editor, Mark Whitaker.
The two editors are set to face off at a particularly unsteady time in the magazines’ history. Mr. Stengel and Mr. Meacham are taking the helm as both Time and Newsweek are contending with companywide job cuts, flat circulation and a stagnant advertising climate.
“They have to figure out what they’re really good at and why they exist,” said Robert S. Boynton, the director of the magazine program at New York University and the author of “The New New Journalism.” “Clearly, the reasons why they existed and thrived in the past won’t work anymore. So they have to decide whether they’re going to go in the elite media direction and have the smart take on the week’s events, or still try to be all things to all people.”
Time, whose parent company Time Inc. is owned by Time Warner, has a higher circulation — roughly four million, to three million for Newsweek, which is owned by the Washington Post Company. But both magazines face the difficult challenge of being relevant in a weekly news cycle that competes against the Internet and cable, daily breaking news and analysis from newspapers, and long-form narrative and investigative articles from monthly magazines like Vanity Fair.
Stephen G. Smith, the Washington bureau chief of The Houston Chronicle, who was the executive editor of Newsweek from 1986 to 1991 and served as the Nation editor at Time from 1978 to 1986, said the influence and prestige of the newsweeklies had eroded over the years.
“It used to be that newsmagazine covers were extraordinarily important, both in politics and culture,” Mr. Smith said. “If you made the cover of Time or Newsweek, it was a really a major event. Now the impact has been greatly muted.”
Before taking over as managing editor on June 15, Mr. Stengel was the president and chief executive of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, a nonprofit and nonpartisan museum and education center. Beginning in 1981, he served several stints at Time as a writer and editor, leaving once to work with Nelson Mandela on his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” and again in 1999 to be a speechwriter for Bill Bradley during his unsuccessful presidential run.
His soon-to-be competitor, Mr. Meacham, is a closer studier of red-state religious issues than Romantic literary theory. He is the author of “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation” and “Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship.” For more than a year, Mr. Meacham, 37, has been widely expected to be the successor to Mr. Whitaker, who is expected to take a job on the online side of the Washington Post Company.
Mr. Meacham declined an interview and a spokeswoman gave no comment on the personnel changes. Daniel Klaidman, the former Washington bureau chief who was elevated to the New York-based job of assistant managing editor in June, is expected to become managing editor under Mr. Meacham.
Lately, as Mr. Whitaker has taken a diminished role in day-to-day operations, Mr. Meacham has taken on more prominent duties at the magazine, like writing the “Editor’s Desk” essay four times in the last month.
When he assumes the position of editor, Mr. Meacham may be forced to consider the question of Newsweek’s publishing schedule. Under Time’s new publication schedule, which is to begin early next year, the magazine will land on newsstands on Fridays and in most subscribers’ mailboxes on Saturdays.
Mr. Stengel said he believed the switch would differentiate Time and Newsweek, which now appear on newsstands on Mondays and are nearly interchangeable for some readers. The weekend is “when people want to consume what we do,” Mr. Stengel said. “This is about coming out at a time to really influence the discussion, whereas Monday you feel a bit like an also-ran.”
Advertisers may find a Friday publication day more attractive, because a fresh issue would be on newsstands all weekend, when many consumers are shopping. Ad pages at Newsweek were up 1.8 percent from January to July of this year over the same period in 2005; for Time, ad pages were up 6.5 percent, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
One possible flaw with this plan is that the common Washington tactic of releasing politically damaging news late on Friday would mean that some news would be too late for the current issue of the magazine. Mr. Stengel said he wasn’t worried.
“How much of that bad news on Friday afternoon do we have in the magazine on Monday? Not much, really,” he said. “That’s why the Internet was invented.”
