WEEKLIES STRUGGLE TO COVER DIANA STORY

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The "when" has always stood solidly among the five W's of journalism, but the death of Princess Diana Saturday night showed how a story's timing can also influence fortunes throughout the publishing world.

For newspapers on the East Coast, for example, the Princess Di story could not have broken more favorably (please hold your scorn; that isn't the same as saying anyone was glad it happened). At almost any time of the day, TV trounces newspapers on the field of immediacy -- how often does a banner headline tell you something you didn't know? Only when events happen late in the evening or overnight do newspapers have the chance to tell you first. And Saturday night events are best of all, because they mean extra sales on Sunday, the day newspapers make most of their profits.

For Time and Newsweek, though, Saturday night is the worst night for news. Both the nation's largest newsweeklies had put their editions to bed earlier in the day and required expensive, Herculean efforts to cover the story.

Time had intended to publish a cover story on religion, but pulled it when news of the accident broke. Its editors embarked on a plan to devote eight pages to the crash, but when news of Diana's death arrived, they changed course again. Sixteen hours later, 21 pages of coverage were included in the editions that hit newsstands yesterday morning, a day late because of Labor Day.

Newsweek's presses were already running when the story broke, but its editors postponed the former cover story -- the Associated Press reported that the subject was an "outward-looking generation of young Americans," whatever that is -- anyway. Staff members huddled at 1:30 a.m. Sunday, and then spent 12 hours reworking the edition; 24 pages were devoted to Diana's death.

Whose midnight toil produced more? The vote here is for Newsweek, by a fair margin. The numerical comparison of 24-21 is misleading because Time used six of its pages strictly for photos. Both mags published sidebars on the press and on Dodi al Fayed, the suitor also killed in the crash, but Newsweek added a well-detailed look at Diana's life, and shorter pieces on her mothering and on how she affected the royal family. Newsweek's maps were grander and more detailed, too. Time's short remembrance of Diana, written by a former top-level editor, James R. Gaines, was about its only uniquefeature.

Meanwhile, the timing could not have been worse for U.S. News and World Report. It closes on Friday, and was entirely helpless as events passed it by, cruelly confirming it as the newsweekly weak sister. Timing wasn't as much an issue at People. It closed as usual last night, and so was able to take the story in stride. When it next hits the street, Diana will be People's cover girl for the 44th time.

Timing is an issue in several other issues on the newsstand as well.

Take, for example, Sport magazine, a sports monthly just out with its October edition, which only begins to express my puzzlement over time: It is barely September, but they've already published for October. Now, of course, magazines post-date all the time, presumably to appear more timely, but especially in this case, the practice seems particularly foolish.

An opening-section entry on the Mike Tyson biting has hardly any bite at all; his infamous encounter with Evander Holyfield's ear occurred June 28, practically making it ancient history. A few pages later, the mag's Ultimate Football Guide runs down games worth traveling to. An entry describes the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a contender for the worst team in football this year, spectacularly stale wisdom after its defeat of the titan 49ers in San Francisco Sunday. But how could they know, when they were forecasting a November event for their October edition in the heat of August?

Timing soured even Sport's well-conceived canvassing of pro players for attitudes toward the media. Back then, Marv Albert was the clear winner in the best TV sportscaster category, but voters might have sought a recount after Albert was indicted on charges of assault and battery after a sexual encounter.

Timing can sometimes be an ally, or an excuse, anyway, when a magazine is caught without coverage of the Big Story. Six weeks ago, Vanity Fair was alone among a Literary Life selection of magazines in not having a word on the slaying of Gianni Versace. But how could it have, when its monthly deadline just hadn't coincided with the awful event? Surely it would come back with something first rate, and perhaps it would make up in depth what it lacked in immediacy.

VF did indeed weigh in, with a top-of-the-cover tome filling 14 pages, but it shouldn't have bothered. Despite the extra reporting time granted by the publishing calendar, writer Maureen Orth's story advances The Story only marginally.

The angle that Andrew Cunanan financed his extravagant pre-homicidal lifestyle through drug dealing wasn't new, but it was better developed than in the first wave of coverage. And substantial attention is devoted to asserting that Cunanan craved sado-masochistic sex, which may explain the circumstances of alleged victim No. 3, Lee Miglin in Chicago, whose death was horribly brutal, even in the context of a serial-killing spree.

Thankfully, there is at least one story worth reading in this issue, buried deep inside (page 300), of particular note to readers who might remember fondly when Boston had Brahmins. It describes the travels and travails of Marietta Peabody FitzGerald Tree, a woman so accomplished and so notable that I wondered why I hadn't heard of her before; many, no doubt, have.

Born in 1917, she rejected the patrician's life for New York and the world. She worked at Life magazine as a researcher (and dated its founder, Henry Luce), blazed a trail for human rights, and served the United States at the United Nations. She married twice, to men who would place her among the English gentry, and at the dining table of Winston Churchill.

And the men whom she didn't marry were even more interesting: She was the woman who got away from John Huston, and she was the woman who was strolling in London with Adlai Stevenson at the moment he died.