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The News Internationalist

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov, 2001 by Seth Mnookin

Hard news is back, and for that Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker is glad. As the country heads to battle against a shadowy foe, the 20-year veteran of the newsmagazine relishes the chance to recapture readers' attention for foreign affairs.

Mark Whitaker, Newsweek's intensely serious editor, rose through the magazine's ranks writing and editing international coverage. So it's no surprise that Whitaker is relishing the opportunity to lead his staff in covering the most important story of the past 20 years. "There is nothing we find more satisfying than to be covering a big, serious news story," he says.

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In the first three weeks following the September II terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Newsweek produced five issues: a breaking-news special that was on newsstands by September 14; three regular issues; and a heavy-stock "keeper edition" focusing on feel-good stories of recovery and heroism. In a flash, the long-simmering argument that newsmagazines were increasingly irrelevant in a world dominated by 24-hour news cycles was rendered moot, with sales of newsstand copies increasing tenfold. And Newsweek, which had lost its once dominant position as the culture and society leader to Time in the past five years, suddenly was on a tear. Assistant managing editor Evan Thomas' 10,000-word piece on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the history of terrorism and the difficulties Americans will have in fighting it was among the best pieces of print journalism produced since the attacks. While one could argue about whether Time or Newsweek(or U.S. News & World Report) was producing better work, e veryone seemed to agree that Newsweek was holding its own.

In early October, Whitaker sat down with Folio: to discuss the challenges facing the media in covering a political/ideological conflict that has come to American soil. He talked about Newsweek's particular editorial and business challenges, the role of newsmagazines in an over-saturated media market, and how the media can use the opportunity to reorient (perhaps permanently) the public's attention toward international affairs.

What has the last couple of weeks been like at a newsweekly when there's been so much information? With The New York Times publishing 100 stories a day, what do you see as your mission in all of this?

The first thing we've seen, when a huge story like this breaks, is that people are still extremely hungry to find out what the newsmagazines have to say. In 24 hours, we produced a special issue, printing two million copies in the middle of the week, that virtually sold out within days. Time did also. And I think that first issue that they did, they did extremely well. And it held up. The regular issue that we put out at the end of the week again had extremely strong sales.

I think it's a reflection of the credibility and the identity that we've built up over decades. Despite the fact that newspapers had touched on some of these themes, we were able to go into greater depth-and, I would argue, with even better and more thoughtful writing on some of the larger questions that had [been] raised.

This is the kind of news environment and the kind of story where the fact that somebody reads a newspaper or watches TV is not going to keep them from reading a newsmagazine. I think people want as much information as they can get. But where we have worked very hard is to try to go beyond what you can get on TV and in the news business.

The press is still trying to figure Out to what extent we should be a patriotic press, and to what extent we should keep our skeptical stance. What is the role, not just of Newsweek, but of the press, in a situation where American soil is under attack and war is also being waged elsewhere?

We have to maintain our skepticism and we have to continue to report as aggressively as we ever have. One of the great things that we are fighting for is free speech and a free press. And sometimes it does make things a little bit messier and more complicated. But one of the great things about our system is that you have a government that's accountable-not only to voters: it's also held to account by the press. So I don't at all believe-and I don't think any reporter worth their salt believes-that we should all fall in line and do whatever the government tells us. We're pushing very hard, as we did in the Gulf War, as we do in any situation in which we anticipate military conflict, to make sure we get as much information and as much access as we possibly can.

On the other hand, you would hope that very good journalists also have a sense of social responsibility [and] will be trying to balance the public's-right-to-know argument versus any other arguments that are being presented. There's been no point when those kinds of discussions didn't take place. They took place during the Gulf War, they took place during Vietnam. I think they're appropriate. But certainly Newsweek will be as aggressive as we've ever been.

Media Industry

The News Internationalist

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov, 2001 by Seth Mnookin

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