Oz Is Back

Newsweek staffers were well into their editorial week last Thursday morning when Editor Kermit Lansner called his department heads together. In typical low-key fashion, he read them a short statement. He will relinquish operational control of the magazine this week, Lansner said, and after a vacation he will move into the newly created post of editorial director.

A company release later quoted him as saying: "After close to 15 years of editing at the top level of the magazine, I feel a strong need to get away from the unrelenting day-to-day pressures of the job." Lansner's new duties were defined with something less than precision. He "will be concerned both with the growth of the magazine itself and with the development of other editorial enterprises for the company."

Hard to Follow. If Lansner's surrender of the editor's chair was a surprise, so was the selection of his successor: Osborn Elliott, 47, who was also Lansner's predecessor. In 1969, Lansner took charge of the weekly routine, while Elliott assumed the title of editor in chief and later became president as well. As recently as this spring, Elliott moved still deeper into the business side when he became board chairman in an executive reshuffle (TIME, April 10). He will retain the title of chairman and chief executive officer.

Many staffers greeted the latest change as good news. During nine years as editor, Elliott was popular with the staff. Said one writer: "When Oz was running it, the magazine did very exciting things. Everyone wondered who could replace him. It turns out that the best replacement for Oz is Oz."

The Elliott act was indeed a hard one to follow. Enthusiastic and decisive, he presided over the magazine during a period of financial prosperity and editorial improvement. Lansner, 50, tried to maintain the magazine's quality in his quiet, cerebral way, but during his tenure, Newsweek, like many magazines, ran into a cost and profit squeeze and was forced to make cutbacks. Gripes grew as the screws were tightened. Finances aside, morale was hurt, according to several staffers, by what they saw as Lansner's slowness in making firm decisions.

A native New Yorker who was educated at Columbia, Harvard and the Sorbonne, Lansner was an assistant philosophy professor at Ohio's Kenyon College and an editor of Art News before he joined Newsweek in 1954. Last week, while Lansner talked about "becoming a human being again, even having weekends off," Elliott claimed to welcome his own return to the grind. "It was a long haul," he said of his previous stint as editor, "but now the pressure has cooled, and I'm looking forward to going back in. I guess I'm gung-ho." A former TIME writer who joined Newsweek in 1955, he will not say how long he intends to occupy the editor's office this time. But whenever he gets tired of it, two other TIME alumni will be waiting in the wings: Managing Editor Lester Bernstein and Executive Editor Robert Christopher.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.