Maynard Parker; Longtime Newsweek Editor

Maynard Parker, editor of Newsweek magazine for most of two decades, died Friday in New York of complications from pneumonia. He was 58.

Parker, who died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, had recently recovered from leukemia, the magazine said.

He was hospitalized Sept. 13, after he closed Newsweek’s issue on independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s report to Congress.

“We have lost a great editor, a good man and a wonderful friend,” said Richard M. Smith, chairman and editor in chief of Newsweek. Parker was at the center of a short-lived media storm after Joe Klein, then a Newsweek political columnist, admitted he was the anonymous author of the best-selling political novel “Primary Colors.” Parker apologized to his staff for publishing speculation about the identity of “Anonymous” when he knew it was Klein.

Parker began at Newsweek in 1967 as the magazine’s Hong Kong correspondent. He was bureau chief in Saigon and in Hong Kong. He became managing editor of Newsweek International in 1973, went to the domestic edition in 1975 and worked as national affairs editor, assistant managing editor and executive editor.

He was named editor in 1982.

“He came in with critics wondering if newsmagazines were dinosaurs, and built the strongest readership in Newsweek history,” said Donald E. Graham, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Washington Post Co., which owns Newsweek.

Parker was raised in Los Angeles. He graduated from Stanford University in 1962 and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1963. He worked as a reporter for Life magazine and served two years as an Army officer.

He was a past member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Magazine Editors and belonged to Stanford’s Humanities and Sciences Council, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Overseas Press Club.

He is survived by his wife, Susan Fraker, two sons and a daughter from a previous marriage, and his father.