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Fareed Zakaria at the 2011 Time 100 Gala. (Getty Images)

Time editor-at-large Fareed Zakaria has lately been the subject of much chatter among colleagues past and present—some of it rather unpleasant for the marquee pundit. And while Time and CNN have done a review of his work and are satisfied that no further issues remain, it doesn’t look like his problems are over just yet: One of his former colleagues at Newsweek has asserted to Off the Record that he ghostwrote a piece that ran under Mr. Zakaria’s byline.

After being accused of plagarizing The New Yorker’s Jill Lepore recently, Mr. Zakaria explained himself to the New York Times’s Christine Haughney: he claimed to have conflated his notes from Ms. Lepore’s piece—apparently copying a passage from the article into longhand—mistaking her thought patterns for his own. Ms. Haughney added, in a veiled aside, that Mr. Zakaria, formerly the editor of Newsweek International, “said he never had an assistant write a column in 25 years and that he began using a research assistant for his column only in the last year.” Maybe so.

However, Jerry Adler, who took a buyout from Newsweek but remained on as a contract science writer says that in 2010 he was commissioned to write an introductory letter, going out under Mr. Zakaria’s byline, for a stand-alone commemorative issue on the environment pegged to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Knowing full well that the piece would go out under Mr. Zakaria’s name, the two-time National Magazine Award finalist says, he wrote the five-paragraph piece, never discussing it with the putative author. “He made some changes, maybe. But he didn’t say, ‘Do this and don’t tell anyone.’ It came to me through channels.”

(Disclosure: this reporter was a college intern at Time in 2007 and at Newsweek in 2009, but did not work or interact in any capacity with Mr. Zakaria in either case.)

For his part, Mr. Zakaria declined through representatives to speak to Off the Record. Nisid Hajari, an editor who worked closely with Mr. Zakaria at Newsweek, indicated: “I edited literally hundreds of pieces by Fareed, big and small, over the years, and they were almost entirely researched and always written by him,” though he didn’t recall this specific case. “Not unusual, if you ask my wife,” he added parenthetically.

Writers’ referring to others’ research, and, often, language, through written files prepared by reporters is a longstanding practice at weekly newsmagazines, though editors familiar with the practice indicate that a reporting or co-writing byline is de rigueur. Noting that today’s editors write their own letters, former Time managing editor Jim Kelly remembered, “My first job at Time magazine [in the 1970s] was, in fact, writing the publisher’s letter. The publisher signed it, Jack Myers, he couldn’t have been more pleasant. I went to meet him the first week, and he said ‘No, just make me sound good, kid.’ The publisher never wrote the letter.”

“It’s possible that he filed to Fareed in the classic newsmagazine team fashion,” said Tony Emerson, former managing editor of Newsweek International. “In team journalism there’s a lot of debates over who deserves the byline. It sounds to me like he could have pitched in with Fareed and is angry he wasn’t credited for his contributions.”

“This isn’t an issue of plagiarism, per se,” said Mr. Emerson. “This is an issue of—whose byline was it?”

And, as in the past, the letter to the readers existed to assuage the publishing side. “The business side had apparently promised [advertisers] that Fareed would write the introduction. They probably did this without asking Fareed--he either wasn’t available or he was too busy. I was asked to do it, which I did,” said Mr. Adler. “It appeared under his byline.”

The entire project, indeed, was a sop to the sort of advertisers and newsstand buyers whose brand value Mr. Zakaria’s name is meant to entice. “That project had just about zero journalistic value. It was an advertising vehicle, a revenue-producing deal made by the business side at a time when Newsweek was desperately trying to keep its head above water,” said Fred Guterl, formerly of Newsweek and now at Scientific American, in an email. Mr. Guterl said he did not recall anyone writing the piece “except Fareed himself,” but noted that it was possible that Mr. Adler had prepared research and written a file for Mr. Zakaria, a claim Mr. Adler denies.

Mr. Adler, whom colleagues describe as well-respected at the magazine, has no ill will toward the highly leveraged Mr. Zakaria. “This was something that didn’t originate with him. Newsweek was trying to capitalize on Fareed’s brand. It wasn’t going to advance his career at all.”

We have completed a thorough review of each of Fareed Zakaria’s columns for TIME, and we are entirely satisfied that the language in question in his recent column was an unintentional error and an isolated incident for which he has apologized. We look forward to having Fareed's thoughtful and important voice back in the magazine with his next column in the issue that comes out on September 7.

Wonder what his status is over at the Washington Post, where Paul Farhi accused Zakaria of journalistic misgivings, and then was forced to redact his piece after Farhi turned out to be wrong.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Well...

April 2010: Newsweek is on the verge of a big web re-launch, which they've invested heavily in. Staffers at Newsweek are excited for a new digital look, but they're wondering why they're hearing rumors they're being moved out of their snazzy new West Village offices they just moved into, which is weird, right?

May 2010: It is indeed weird, as they find out. Newsweek is put up for sale by The Washington Post Company, which has owned it since 1961. Donald Graham of The Washington Post Company says the magazine "might be a better fit elsewhere." Newsweek's then-editor-in-chief Jon Meacham begins a (noble, but tragic and doomed) quest/publicity tour to find the money to buy it himself. The sales book for the company leaks and, surprise surprise, one of the cost-cutting ideas involves reducing the staff. Newsweek will move two more times between now and end of this timeline.

Early October 2010: Sidney Harman emerges as the buyer of Newsweek after other suitors who aren't Jon Meacham—including Politico and Reuters—didn't pony up for the magazine. People marvel at the fact/irony that a 91 year-old man is investing in a national print weekly which (despite some very fine journalism) many Americans are only familiar with as that magazine they read at the dentist's office. The asking price? One American Dollar ($1.00), plus Newsweek's swelling debt.

October 2010, Two Seconds Later: Newsweek's then-editor-in-chief Jon Meacham resigns.

Late October 2010: Harman is profiled by New York Magazine. He admits that he struggles to remember the word "dinosaur." It's reported elsewhere that Harman's privately saying he can float $40M to the venture and give it three years to succeed. The search for a replacement editor starts at Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria and goes outward from there, far and wide, even at one point netting former Observer editor Peter Kaplan. Newsweek moves offices again.

November 5th, 2010: Free of Newsweek, The Washington Post Company celebrates a 21 percent quarter-to-quarter rise in online publishing profits.

November 2010: The new Sidney Harman-owned Newsweek merges with Barry Diller's IAC-owned The Daily Beast after around a month of formal talks, which at one point completely broke down. An ostensibly reluctant Tina Brown is anointed the editor-in-chief of both properties, and put in charge of her first magazine since Talk, which had the best magazine launch party ever, so this is going to go smoothly. Nobody is quite sure how it's going to work but people at The Daily Beast are very excited that they're going to be printed in dead trees and ink. The very few staffers left at Newsweek who were there before the sale was announced—meaning they've either survived layoffs or haven't yet found jobs elsewhere—are utterly terrified and, in most instances, praying for a buyout option. Others, like those at the website, would like to keep their website, and launch a Tumblr confusingly called Save Newsweek Dot Com. Those staffers are later poached by Tumblr. The Observer's media reporter at the time (a former Newsweek staffer) then writes: "Oh my God. This is really going to happen." He is later poached by Newsweek/The Daily Beast.

March 2011: The first issue of the Tina Brown-edited Newsweek emerges with Hillary Clinton on the cover, under cover lines about her "war" on the glass ceiling, which nobody should take to mean as anything other than another issue of Newsweek. Ms. Brown "pens" a memorable Internal Memo, "obtained" by the Observer. The second issue has a piece by Bret Easton Ellis, concerning the matter of Charlie Sheen. By now, Andrew Sullivan has been poached by Tina Brown for Newsweek/The Daily Beast. The nu-Newsweek has arrived.

April 13, 2011: Sidney Harman, who remained an active part of Newsweek/The Daily Beast's operations, dies at 92. He is survived by his wife, Jane Harman, a U.S. Democratic Congresswoman. In a New York Times article headlined "Harman Family to Keep Its Stake in Newsweek," Sidney Harman's lawyer explains:

“The Harman family is totally committed to Newsweek and its future,” he said. “They will continue to be active and supportive as Sidney would have wished and in Sidney’s memory.”

The manager of the Harman family's investment in Newsweek/The Daily Beast isn't yet clear. Harman's 29 year-old son is floated as a possibility, but Daniel Harman, who is in business school at the time, probably knows better than to get into media at his first strike in the world as a businessman.

May 2011: Jane Harman is now managing the Harman Family's interest in Newsweek. Tina Brown is profiled by the The New York Times Magazine, and we learn that Harman had taken to calling Brown "my beauty" and that Brown's complete control over Newsweek—which at this point has seen magazine sales go up, but ad sales go down—was hard-won.

July 2011: Newsweek.com ceases to exist.

September 2011: Jon Meacham is now a contributing editor at Newsweek's sworn enemy, Time.

October 31, 2011: AdWeek's Lucia Moses has a spooky piece about nu-Newsweek detailing the fact that Newsweek has a ways to go, and that becoming profitable by 2013—the timeframe Barry Diller originally gave the venture—won't be easy:

If that task takes years and Newsweek can’t find a way to regain the relevance weekly newsmagazines have lost since the explosion of news on the Internet, then Diller and Jane Harman, Sidney Harman’s widow, could reach the point where they finally decide to cut bait.

July 24, 2012: One year, three months, and eleven days was the amount of time it took from the Harman family to go from "totally committed" to the partnership with IAC and Barry Diller that oversaw Newsweek to only holding a minority stake in it. "The Harman trust has indicated it does not intend to make further capital contributions to the venture," it is explained, as the Harmans confirmed to Reuters' Peter Lauria—a former Daily Beast writer working for a company which, if you'll remember, was once interested in buying Newsweek—that their stake in the magazine/website has been diluted to a "minimum level of ownership." The Harman family refutes a rumor that the decision was based on the content of the magazine under Tina by explaining the decision as "purely financial."

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

We were always told James Buchanan held that title but, inside, Andrew Sullivan argues that the President 'gets' gay people because, as a biracial American, "Barack Obama had to come out of a different closet."

Look at us, talking about magazines! Like it's 1995 again.

According to The Post, “When Tina saw the Time cover, she laughed and said, ‘Let the games begin.’

Your move, Bloomberg Businessweek.

Thanks to Ann Romney, Hilary Rosen, and the absurdist theatrics of the presidential race, the ancient human condition known as motherhood is having a controversial moment. This week, TIME jumps into the fray with a cover story on "attachment parenting," the school of child-rearing popularized by The Baby Book. Baby Book author Dr. Bill Sears prescribes breast-feeding into toddlerhood, letting babies sleep in your bed, and wearing babies around all day in a sling.

The eye-catching cover (The look on that kid's face!) features 26-year-old Jamie Grumet, who writes an attachment parenting blog I Am Not the Babysitter and breastfed until she was 6.

“When you think of breast-feeding, you think of mothers holding their children, which was impossible with some of these older kids,” cover photographer Martin Schoeller said on TIME's Light Box blog. “I liked the idea of having the kids standing up to underline the point that this was an uncommon situation.”

Kind of the same principle as New York's Ellie-winning motherhood cover—it put a fiftysomething woman in Demi Moore's iconic pregnancy pose— but with less photoshop.

According to a Q&A with Ms. Grumet, she fully anticipates TIME readers' ignorance, moralizing, and disgust.

What do you say to people who say breast-feeding a 3-year-old is disturbing or wrong?

They are people who tell me they’re going to call social services on me or that it’s child molestation. I really don’t think I can reason with those people. But as far as someone who says they’re uncomfortable with this, I don’t think it’s wrong to admit this. But people have to realize this is biologically normal. It’s not socially normal. The more people see it, the more it’ll become normal in our culture. That’s what I’m hoping. I want people to see it.

Consider it seen!

Another extended breastfeeding mother featured in the article, Dionna Ford, said she was inspired by the best viral breastfeeding documentary available on YouTube, Extraordinary Breastfeeding. We've embedded it below because it includes the rare child's review of breastfeeding.

"One of the really nice things as children get older is that they can verbalize their experience," says mom Veronica.

And her eight-year-old Bethany gives it two thumbs up: "Better than anything in the world, better than mango even."

Time

But Time editor Rick Stengel's decision was  also a vote of confidence for actor Jesse Eisenberg, who had suggested revolutionaries for person of the year while participating in a panel the magazine hosted this fall. (His qualification was having played last year's man of the year, Mark Zuckerberg, in a movie.)

Amid a chorus of "Steve Jobs," Mr. Eisenberg said that choosing any individual would "undercut those movements."

We haven't read the cover story by Kurt Andersen yet, but with only a quick glance we noticed that this is his second magazine piece this month to name-check Francis Fukuyama's The End of History.

Mr. Zakaria told David Carr, "I very much want to be in the business of creating content, of doing stories all over the world, rather than figuring out what the business model is for Newsweek on the iPad, although that's very important work as well."

Ah, yes, important work. It is important work but Mr. Zakaria has no interest in trying, even if it means failing several times over. At least he's honest. Off to the warm, safe embrace of Time and CNN and HBO he goes!

Mr. Zakaria will write a biweekly column for Time and will have an expanded role on CNN in a Time Warner snyergy lovefest. Here's the release:

FAREED ZAKARIA JOINS TIME MAGAZINE
New Column, Features in TIME will Complement Expanded Role at CNN and HBO

NEW YORK (August 18, 2010) - TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel announced today that award-winning journalist Fareed Zakaria will join TIME as Editor at Large on October 1. Mr. Zakaria will have a regular column and will contribute cover stories and features in the magazine and on TIME.com. 
 
In addition to his new role at TIME, Mr. Zakaria has renewed his association with CNN, where he will continue to work on his weekly show, "Fareed Zakaria GPS", and, in addition, will produce several special reports a year.  He will also serve as a consultant for HBO's documentary unit. TIME, CNN, and HBO are all owned by Time Warner, and the company plans to utilize Mr. Zakaria's expertise across these platforms.
 
In making the announcement, Mr. Stengel said: "Fareed is one of the world's premier public intellectuals. He is known internationally as an exceptional authority on foreign policy, global politics and world affairs. I am thrilled that Fareed is joining us; his singular voice in explaining the world to people is a natural fit with our editorial mission at a moment when TIME is more relevant and wide-reaching than it's ever been." 
 
Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. said, "Fareed has brought unparalleled insight to CNN's Sunday morning programming, and his voice will now resonate like that of no other journalist in the world - globally, in print, online, and in longform - thanks to the unmatched resources of Time Warner. We're looking forward to continuing to blaze new trails with Fareed and our partners at Time and HBO."

Mr. Zakaria said: "I'm excited at the prospect of writing for TIME's vast and important audience. Rick Stengel has a compelling vision for the magazine and website and I'm delighted to be a part of it. I will also be doing more at CNN as well as HBO, where I have had wonderful experiences already. This is a unique opportunity to bring together on a common platform, my work on television, print, and the web. I'm grateful for the vote of confidence and look forward to getting to work."
 
TIME and CNN will collaborate on making Mr. Zakaria's online presence on CNN.com and TIME.com a powerful joint platform for his views and ideas with distinctive written content and video, including interviews with newsmakers.
 
Mr. Zakaria joins a deep bench of TIME experts on politics and foreign policy, including Deputy Managing Editor Michael Elliott, who will continue in his role as Editor of TIME international. In addition to Mr. Zakaria's regular column, cover stories and features, he will contribute ideas on TIME's news coverage. Mr. Zakaria's byline will add further depth and luster to TIME's lineup of columnists, led by Joe Klein, America's preeminent political journalist and an expert on foreign policy affairs as well.
 
Fareed Zakaria has been the editor of Newsweek International since October 2000, overseeing the magazine's editions abroad. He writes a regular column for Newsweek, which also appears in the international edition and regularly in the Washington Post.  He was the managing editor of Foreign Affairs, the widely circulated journal of international politics and economics. He is the author of several books, including "The Future of Freedom," and  "The Post-American World," both of them New York Times and international bestsellers, and both now in translation in over 30 languages.
 
Mr. Zakaria has won several awards for his columns and cover essays, in particular for his October 2001 Newsweek cover story, "Why They Hate Us." He was awarded the National Magazine Award for his columns and commentary this year. In 1999, he was named "one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century" by Esquire magazine. In 2007, he was named one of the "top 100 public intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. He has received honorary degrees from many universities, including Brown, the University of Miami, and Oberlin. He serves on the board of Yale University, The Council on Foreign Relations, and Shakespeare and Company.
 
He received a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard. He lives in New York City with his wife, son and two daughters.

 

A “straightforward reported piece,” Time’s spokesman protested after an Observer investigation explored whether the shocking cover story constituted a questionable strain of advocacy journalism, compromised by bureau chief Aryn Baker's likely profits from NATO-enabled war contracts and ties to an Afghan minister's $100 million investment project. Last week Time's defense of its work as cooly objective seemed at odds with editor Richard Stengel's concession, in an Aug. 2 interview with CBS's Katie Couric, that the no-nose piece carried a “strong point of view.”

One team whose point of view will remain unshaken by the Bibi Aisha report are analysts for the CIA’s “Red Cell," an office created after 9/11 by the Director of Intelligence and charged with finding "outside-the-box" solutions to problems. The group's brainstorming sessions to shore up war support were exposed in last month's dump of 76,000 files by WikiLeaks hacker Julian Assange.

Aryn Baker, like a number of others in the embedded press corps, shrugged off the material in the leak. Writing in Time, she contrasted the WikiLeaks files with real war reporting, calling the secret memos unreliable. “The data are raw, unfiltered and unqualified,” she wrote in a Time piece exploring reports that the Pakistan intelligence service is working against NATO, and said that on this issue, “[t]aken as a whole, they are about as useful as Googling...”

Okay. But one item that Time has left you to Google for yourself — perhaps owing to its rawness — is the March 11, 2010 memorandum from the Red Cell problem-solving group. This time the issue at hand was faltering public support of the war and the solution was promoting women's horror stories. Subtitling their memo "Why Counting On Apathy Might Not Be Enough," the agents warned that sending more soldiers to Afghanistan threatened to outrage the French and German publics. “Indifference might turn into active hostility,” they wrote, especially if soldiers and civilians die. The fix? Instead of using generals in desert camo as the face of the NATO mission, use oppressed Afghan women. These victims could make “ideal messengers,” the analysts wrote, “in humanizing the ISAF [NATO International Security Assistance Force] role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory.” The report also urged that these stories be pitched to TV shows with large female audiences.

After the WikiLeaks dump, the Red Cell’s phone numbers given in the memo no longer worked and the Red Cell could not be reached for comment.

The CIA's past work with Time and other periodicals figured heavily in a 1977 Rolling Stone cover story by Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein. During the Cold War, he reported, more than 400 journalists, including Time founder Henry Luce, had worked with the CIA. One senior CIA official, William B. Bader, had told senators visiting Langley in March 1976 that “there is quite an incredible spread of relationships...You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people at the management level.”

“From the Agency’s perspective,” Bernstein noted, “there is nothing untoward in such relationships, and any ethical questions are a matter for the journalistic profession to resolve, not the intelligence community.” Times have changed, of course (as has Time). But as Bernstein pointed out, when incoming CIA director George H.W. Bush pulled the plug on paid relationships with journalists, Bush noted that nothing was stopping reporters from volunteering free favors to the government — and that such aid would even be “welcome.”

Attention from Time helped Aisha win a trip from a Kabul women’s shelter last Thursday to Los Angeles, where she will undergo reconstructive surgery with help from the Grossman Burn Foundation. But Time’s “point of view” story, while perhaps the most strident in connecting her mutilation to NATO’s military enemies, was no scoop. Months earlier, Aisha had told her appalling story to The Daily Beast and ABC’s Diane Sawyer. While Taliban have refused credit for the young woman’s mutilation, it turns out the group’s spokesmen freely admit that their justice system includes other human rights abuses. Mullah Dahoud, a commander, made himself available to the U.K. Times to say of one woman, convicted of adultery, that the Taliban “whipped her in front of all the local people to show them an example. Then we shot her.”