Given the current debate in Washington over the War Powers Act and presidential authority in declaring military action, TIME Magazine decided to make the Constitution the focus of their 10th annual history issue, asking “Does it still matter?” Andrea Mitchell had TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel on her MSNBC show to explain why they chose that particular cover story, which is guaranteed to raise some eyebrows on the left and right.

After ten years with the magazine, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria will be leaving at the end of September to join Time as Editor at Large. Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel announced today that he is “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.”

In Katie Couric’s web series, @KatieCouric, the CBS anchor today interviewed TIME magazine Managing Editor Rick Stengel about his decision to run the controversial photo of a woman brutalized by the Taliban on its cover, with the headline “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan.”

This week’s Time magazine cover might startle you. It might make you a bit uncomfortable. And that’s exactly what Rick Stengel, the magazine’s managing editor, intended. The cover image shows 18-year-old Aisha, an Afghan woman who, after leaving her abusive in-laws, had her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban. The story’s headline reads: What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.

As Frank Rich noted in his Sunday column this week a whole lot of people suffer from the habit of comparing President Obama to past political heavy-weights. Or not. At least according to New Yorker editor David Remnick today on Meet the Press, who noted that Obama “does not have the talents” of Ronald Reagan.

I think this can be considered the magazine coup of the decade — thus far. Newsweek has announced that President Obama will pen next week’s cover story on Haiti for the magazine. Without question this is a huge score for Newsweek, which has spent a great deal of time and money overhauling itself in the last six months. According to a report in the WSJ all Newsweek editor Jon Meacham had to do was ask.

Now that the dust has settled over the initial and headline-making revelations of the new campaign book Game Change, a number of people are beginning to question how authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin managed to get all the frequently anonymous juicy quotes they included in the book. Did the authors, in fact, follow their own attribution guidelines?

The year 2009 was a remarkably troubled year for magazine publishing — filled with lay-offs, declining ad revenue, and serious questions about the viability of the medium as a whole. Yet, in this sea of bad news, a few titles were able to eke out some positive attention and influence over the field — thanks, in part, to the vision and leadership of their editors. Who among them did we find to do his or her job the best? Jon Meacham, Editor-in-chief for Newsweek. His runner-up and reader poll winner after the jump.

2009 was a remarkably troubled year for magazine publishing. But a few titles were able to eke out some positive attention and influence over the field — thanks, in part, to the vision and leadership of their editors. In our first end-of-year media poll, we ask our loyal, smart, and attractive users to share their thoughts on who had the biggest year in various media categories. Our first category: Magazine Editors.

Last night, Bill O’Reilly had Time Magazine managing editor Rick Stengel on his show to discuss Time‘s decision to name Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke as their Person of the Year. After Stengel explained their decision to put Bernanke on the cover (over the Kardashian sisters, as O’Reilly suggested), the conversation turned to print as a medium. According to O’Reilly, Newsweek isn’t going to survive.

Time takes its ‘Person of the Year’ very seriously, as evidenced by this year’s pick: United States Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who I suspect is really just a fill in for the U.S. economy, which yes, is absolutely the overriding issue of the year. Had Time taken the whole thing slightly less seriously they probably would have considered picking someone who might actually sell magazines

Though the Power Grid is often a lesson in maintaining influence over time (see: Anna Wintour), due to its automated algorithm, movement in the ranks can often be traced directly to a piece of news or media event. And it’s not the movement that is interesting in and of itself, but the reasons behind it.

This week, Erin Andrews is a perfect example.

In an exclusive interview, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Time‘s Rick Stengel that America should back off from allegations about Iran’s nuclear program. The interview was recorded in video, and is currently featured on the homepage of Time.com. Does this spell a new direction for the legendary news weekly? Or is it more likely the culmination of a long (and smart) evolution for Time?

Where were you a year ago today? If you are a political journalist — or media hanger-on — chances are you were living out of a suitcase at the 2008 Presidential Conventions, with the Dems nominating Barack Obama in Denver and the GOP nominating John McCain in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Remember those heady days?

Welcome to the fun-filled world of a start-up! For the past four weeks, we’ve taken to comparing the site to a baby: Don’t leave it alone, don’t expect much sleep, you never know what it’ll burp up. (Wordpress! How you bedevil us!). Though it’s certainly forced us to stretch in ways we weren’t expecting, we’ve enjoyed the past month — enough to look forward to sticking around for a while (sorry, Brain Trust).

In October, 1991, James Fallows wrote a hilarious takedown of the Economist that ran in the Washington Post’s Outlook Section. The essay attempted to explain why perfectly intelligent people, like Harvard’s Robert Reich (who at the time was in the middle of a squabble with Newsweek’s Robert Samuelson), would say things like: “I, for one, [...]

Public radio host and media maven Kurt Andersen is using a forward-thinking approach to promote his new book Reset: blogging about current issues and headlines in the context of the book’s thesis for Time.com. Call it book excerpting 2.0.

It may come as a surprise to learn that Jon Meacham is the number one Magazine Editor given that Newsweek is going through a rather dramatic repositioning and redesign – an exercise not typically taken by a healthy magazine. So why is he number one?