Zakaria Moves to Time

Fareed Zakaria

The New York Times reports: In the latest blow to Newsweek, its best-known columnist, Fareed Zakaria, has gone to work for Time magazine, its direct competitor.

The move, which was announced on Wednesday, is part of a larger deal in which Zakaria, who is an OPC member, will move his office to CNN, where he does a weekly program, “Fareed Zakaria’s GPS,” and begin contributing several specials a year to the news network.

Although Time Warner has a mixed reputation for synergy — see AOL — the deal with Zakaria means that a single highly regarded editorial asset will be arrayed over both television and magazine platforms. Zakaria will also serve as a consultant for HBO’s documentary unit.

“All of my work will now appear at one company, and instead of a kind of awkwardness, there is a very real synergy,”  Zakaria said over a quick lunch at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan. “There is a level of sophistication in this building about content — about the ways to promote it — that’s exciting.”

Zakaria had been a columnist for Newsweek and was an editor of Newsweek’s international edition, but he will now become a contributing editor for Time, writing a column every other week and contributing perhaps six cover stories a year. He will continue to write a column for The Washington Post.

Read the entire article at NYTimes.com >>