Sea Change

New helmsman at the Atlantic

When Boston Real Estate Magnate Mortimer Zuckerman bought the Atlantic Monthly last March, a longtime local journalist sitting at the Ritz-Carlton bar near the magazine's offices said balefully of Robert Manning, the Atlantic's editor in chief since 1966: "I give him six weeks." It turned out to be six months, but word did finally come last week that Manning had been replaced. The Atlantic's new helmsman is William Whitworth, 43, a highly respected associate editor at The New Yorker, and one of several potential successors to that magazine's long-reigning editor in chief, William Shawn, 73.

Relations between Manning, 60, and the volatile Zuckerman, 43, had been tenuous from the start. The situation deteriorated when, after promising to stay away from editorial decisions, Zuckerman labeled himself chairman of the editorial board atop the magazine's July masthead. Insiders say he has been looking for a younger man all along to attract newer talent and give the 123-year-old monthly more "energy," which, he says, had been lacking. Manning, a former Under Secretary of State and TIME senior editor, leaves the Atlantic with four National Magazine Awards (1971-73 and 1979) and its highest circulation ever (351,000). Whitworth will not assume full control of the Atlantic until next spring. But Zuckerman already plans to add popular Boston Globe Columnist Ellen Goodman and British Journalist William Shawcross as contributors. Science Essayist Lewis Thomas and London Sunday Times Editor Harold Evans have been signed as senior advisory editors.

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