Time and Newsweek, old adversaries with a common challenge

The move upstairs for Mark Whitaker, editor of Newsweek magazine for nearly eight years and succession by his deputy and longtime presumptive heir, Jon Meacham, 37 are part of the adjustment that both Newsweek and its crosstown rival Time magazine are going through, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. They are profitable, but they share a problem.

"Both magazines share a common challenge," says Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine and now chief executive of the Aspen Institute think tank. "It's not a question of one beating the other but both being smart enough to reinvent themselves for the 21st century."

Time recently changed its publication day (as did Maclean's before it), but Newsweek has taken a wait-and-see attitude, with the possibility that the publishing date differentiation might be a good thing.