Terry McDonell, the editor of Sports Illustrated Group who was flagged as a potential candidate for the top job at Newsweek, has shot down speculation that he is in the running to be the newsweekly’s editor-in-chief.
Newsweek owner Sidney Harman said he has talked to nearly a dozen candidates and still believes that a new editor will be named by early November.
On Monday, talks over a potential merger with the Daily Beast, which is owned by Barry Diller and edited by Tina Brown, broke down. Such a deal could have netted Brown the top spot.
On paper, McDonell was seen as a potentially good candidate. He had been an assistant managing editor of Newsweek in his younger days and had co-founded and edited the now-defunct Smart magazine, as well as Hearst’s Esquire.
His star seemed to be on the rise earlier this year at Time Inc., when he was tapped for a leading role to develop digital initiatives there, although those efforts have met with roadblocks and frustrations recently.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs forced Time Inc. to hand off the role of iPad pioneer to Time magazine, which had to race to ready its app for the debut of the iPad this spring, even though SI’s app was set to roll out first with a more advanced edition.
SI did get on the iPad a month after its sister title, with only single-copy sales available. Then, when SI was ready to unveil the first paid subscription via the iPad, Apple vetoed the application on the grounds that it wasn’t ready to sell subscriptions that were substantially discounted from the single-copy price.
Despite the startup hurdles, McDonell said he is not leaving. He remains one of the leading editors on digital initiatives at Time Inc. and is working on new applications to be rolled out in the next few months.
“I have no plan to leave Sports Illustrated,” he told The Post.