Fareed Zakaria Leaves Newsweek, Joins Rival Time

Slate, citing Folio mag, notes the new direction of Newsweek's prominent blowhard.

Time magazine is scheduled to announce on Thursday that it has snatched Fareed Zakaria from one of its biggest rivals, Newsweek. Zakaria, a columnist for the Washington Post, editor of Newsweek's international edition, and host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, will be named a contributing editor for Time and will pen a column that runs in the print edition of the magazine every other week. "The departure of Mr. Zakaria, a well-known columnist and television presence, is another blow to Newsweek, which was sold to Sidney Harman, an audio equipment mogul, at the beginning of the month," the New York Times' David Carr wrote on the paper's Media Decoder blog. Since the magazine was sold, Jon Meacham, the magazine's editor; Michael Isikoff, an investigative reporter; and columnist Evan Thomas have all announced they would be leaving. "Fareed is one of a small handful of global public intellectuals, and he has proven how important his thinking and writing is, over and over, especially since the attacks of Sept. 11," said Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time. "He is a kind of spokesman for a post-American world, and we think he represents an important piece of the puzzle for us." Zakaria said that moving from Newsweek to Time made sense because the magazine is owned by Time Warner, which also owns CNN, where his foreign affairs program airs every Sunday. "All of my work will now appear at one company, and instead of a kind of awkwardness, there is a very real synergy," he told Carr over lunch. Zakaria is also taking on a role as a consultant for HBO's documentary film unit, according to Folio. HBO, too, is owned by Time Warner.