Kermit Lansner, 78, who was managing editor and then Editor of NEWSWEEK from 1965 to 1972, died of complications of lung cancer. Lansner brought an unusual background to the job: he had been a philosophy professor and an editor at ArtNews before joining NEWSWEEK as a book critic. In the ’60s, when the drumbeat of political and international news was so insistent, a top editor so steeped in culture was rare. That was his great strength: he broadened the magazine’s perspective at a time when it was all too easy to get caught up in the tumult of the moment. Lansner formed a warm, constructive partnership with Osborn Elliott, who, as NEWSWEEK’s Editor and Editor-in-Chief, directed the coverage of such events as the civil-rights movement and the Vietnam War. Lansner reveled in the intensity of NEWSWEEK’s reporting, but in private he liked to reflect on the absurdities of the journalistic profession. He relished the news, but never let it set the boundaries of his life.
