Euology

By Walter Isaacson, Managing Editor

Both in person and in the pages he produced each week, Newsweek editor MAYNARD PARKER had an edgy energy that was rooted in a passion for the news. Often tightly coiled and always ready to spring, he had the gleeful ability to rip up his magazine as it was going to press in order to make it more exciting. Every Monday I felt the special kinship that comes from having tried to pull off the same feats; I could admire the smart way he had packaged a cover, spotted a trend or elicited a nugget of reporting.

Maynard was one of the creative editors of the '80s and '90s who reinvented and revitalized newsmagazines, once considered news-rehashing dinosaurs. Although he had the hard-news instincts of a foreign correspondent, he developed a fingertip feel for the kind of cultural, social, family and health trends that transcend last week's headlines and become next week's dinner-table conversations. His competitive instincts caused him, like the rest of us, to make an occasional mistake, but his legendary intensity made him not merely a survivor but a person who prevailed in the struggle to keep journalism smart and relevant. I hope, and I suspect, that he would consider it a compliment and an accomplishment that he made all of us--not only his colleagues at Newsweek but his competitors at TIME and elsewhere--better at what we do.

--Walter Isaacson, managing editor