The Juggler   

Balancing three upper-level editing positions while commuting between two cities might sound like an impossible challenge, but not for Ann McDaniel , who recently added Washington bureau chief to her list of titles at Newsweek .

"Some weeks it's a lot to juggle," she admits. In addition to heading the Washington bureau, McDaniel will continue to be one of the magazine's assistant managing editors, as well as its chief of correspondents.

"I don't know anyone else that could do these three jobs at a time," says Evan Thomas , the news-weekly's former Washington bureau chief who stepped down to work on special projects at the magazine.

But to McDaniel, 41, the juggling act comes naturally. "Much of what I do is really not dramatically different from what I've been doing for the last four years... It was one of those things where it was an evolution into the job," she says, adding that she began to informally assist Thomas with managing the bureau in the late '80s.

McDaniel, who joined Newsweek in 1984, says she looks forward to her new position because it will allow her to spend more time near her Washington, D.C., home. But in order to swing more down time at home, she'll have to travel to New York and back every week, helping to supervise Newsweek's contributors in 26 bureaus throughout the world and somehow leaving enough time to direct the 17 reporters in the Washington bureau.

But finding time is the least of McDaniel's concerns. She's got work to do. "We're competing against America's best journalists," she says. "It's not only tough as the bureau chief, but it's also tough for the correspondents, just making sure that we are getting the best stories."