Back talk with Mark Whitaker.

At times, Mark Whitaker's unassuming manner belies his tremendous influence on people, politics, and policy. As editor of Newsweek, which boasts a circulation of more than 4 million--3.2 million in the U.S:--and a readership of more than 21 million, Whitaker is setting the agenda for global news coverage. Since being named editor, Newsweek has earned four National Magazine Awards, including the coveted General Excellence recognition in 2002 and 2004.

Whitaker, 47, became the first black editor of a national newsweekly in 1998--21 years after working as an intern at Newsweek while a student at Harvard. He officially joined the magazine as a flail-time reporter in 1981. He went on to serve as an assistant managing editor from 1991 to 1995.

In May 2004, Whitaker joined the front lines of the struggle to bring diversity to the industry when the American Society of Magazine Editors elected him president, only the second African American to hold that position. BLACK ENTERPRISE recently caught up with Whitaker to discuss his career and the challenge of bringing diversity to the magazine industry.

What are some of the challenges you face as a person of color running a mainstream magazine? Well, I've always said my goal was to be the best editor of Newsweek, and not just be the best black editor. Obviously, my ethnicity has had some influence on the way I think about things, certainly my commitment to diversity on the staff and, particularly, having people of color who are in a position of real influence both in terms of the kinds of stories they do and the positions they hold within the magazine. I think there are some stories and some covers that we've done that perhaps another editor might not have done. But most of the time, I'm just focused on the larger issues involved in being editor.

Are magazines getting hard hit in this age of cable IV and the Internet? The front pages of the major newspapers look more like news magazines. There are magazines on television and on the Web. I think it's a very powerful formula. But the challenge for us is that the more other media copy us, the more we've got to invent new ways of doing things. It's always been true in the world of news magazines that if you stand still, you're going to get run over, so I have to keep moving.

How did you end up serving as president of ASME? When I became the editor of Newsweek, I was approached by people on the board who asked me to join. Once I joined, I guess people thought I was a useful board member. Then, they asked me if I would be interested in running for one of the executive positions. I was the treasurer for a couple of years. Then, I was secretary, and then vice president, and now president. It took a long time to prepare myself for the idea of being president.

What do you think of the lack of diversity at the executive level? It's a complicated issue. Obviously on one level there are a lot of companies that could do better. But it's a two way street. In order for people of color to have a shot at the top jobs, they have to pay their dues like everybody else. And that comes with time, and it involves enduring frustration, politics, and a lot of things. Since I've been in a position to hire and promote, I've looked not just for talented people of color, but people of color who really enjoy magazines and news magazine journalism because if you don't really enjoy it, you might do OK. But you're not going to rise to the top.

Have you started any initiatives to enhance diversity within journalism? ASME has been working hard at it with our internship program. We've launched a new recruiting effort to get the word out on college campuses to check out magazines as a career. It's moving slowly but surely. It's not anything that we can change overnight, but the more we work at it and whittle away at the problem, the better I hope things will get.

Your magazine took a big hit over a news story about Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay. Has the public lost a sense of trust in journalism as a result? Obviously, trust is our most important commodity in dealing with our controversy. That was our primary principle. We tried to be as transparent as possible about the mistakes that we had made and what we were going to do to fix them. The other thing that you learn when you're in the middle of that is that there are a lot of people who have other agendas for attacking you. The noise level can get very high these days between cable TV and the Internet and blogs and so forth, and not all that noise is coming from our readers. So in dealing with that crisis, we really focused on steps we thought would maintain our bond with our readers.