The chairman of Conde Nast Publications, S.I. Newhouse Jr., announced yesterday that James Truman is out as editorial director. Thomas Wallace, editor of Conde Nast Traveler, is in.

Mr. Truman, an Englishman who held the job for 11 years, is, a company statement said, “returning to Europe.”

The post of editorial director of Conde Nast, a job that reportedly pays $1 million, is at once curiously nebulous and somewhat specific. More than an overseer, the editorial director is a sort of creator and ruler of the zeitgeist. In that post, one certain relationship is everything.

“The job is defined by the relation ship to Si,” the author Harold Evans, founding editor of Conde Nast Traveler, said, using Mr. Newhouse’s nickname. “It’s a dynamic job, not a static position to be filled by an MBA.”

Mr. Evans is the husband of a former star Conde Nast editor, Tina Brown, and it was he who recruited Mr. Wallace to Traveler.

Although the privately held company is not saying who cut the ties with Mr. Truman, his was not a post one gives up lightly.

“It’s the human face of the editorial spirit of the company,” Suzanne Ely, a professor of journalism at the New School, said.

But spirit, or spirituality, might be the very thing that ended Mr. Truman’s reign.

In 2002, he spent a month at the Woodstock retreat with Tibetan monks. “Ever since then, it hasn’t appeared that his main focus was ramping up consumer magazines that appeal to frivolous needs and wishes,” Ms. Ely said.

During Mr. Truman’s tenure, which began when he was only 36, he oversaw the launches of the aggressive consumer magazines Lucky and Cargo and the forthcoming shelter title Domino. His diverse roles also included considerable involvement in the look of the new Conde Nast Building at 4 Times Square and its Frank Gehry-designed cafeteria.

Even after Mr. Truman spent more than a decade in the job, however, some weren’t sure precisely what he contributed to the magazines, which now total 18.

“You never knew what he did,” a New Yorker writer, Ken Auletta, said. “Part of his job was to be subtle and behind the scenes.”

Others suspect that Mr. Truman let the company fall behind the times.

“Conde Nast has been left behind in the daily blogs,” Russ Smith, who founded the New York Press, said. “That’s what made National Review vital again. As a biweekly, it’s irrelevant in this culture. Conde Nast has been incredibly slow. Maybe Truman is in the 1990s of that whole culture.”

If he gradually made the job his own, Mr. Truman entered it in the shadow of a legendary predecessor, Alexander Liberman, who was editorial director for more than 30 years.

“He was an art director, but he advised and tinkered. Liberman was regarded as an icon,” Victor Navasky, director of the Delacorte Center of Magazine Journalism School at Columbia Journalism, said. “That was before the current ownership.”

“Alexander Liberman was a brilliant designer,” Mr. Evans said.

Mr. Evans recalled that after editing newspapers for years, he was accustomed to squeezing photos in around text, but Mr. Liberman – who also was a sculptor of note – would encourage larger, more grand photography. “He would say, ‘Let’s have some glory,'” Mr. Evans said.

The job evolved under Mr. Truman. The former editor in chief of Details magazine and earlier the features editor of Vogue, he had an affinity for art and design but was not a professional in the field.

“James Truman was a different kind of figure. Not a designer or artist, but a lively mind,” Mr. Evans said.

One of Mr. Truman’s recent ideas, one not completed, was a niche magazine devoted to art and architecture. As the general public seems at full capacity for such subjects, however, it’s no wonder that the project is said to have died before it was even born.

With the appointment of Mr. Wallace, the job appears to be evolving further.

Mr. Wallace became editor in chief of Conde Nast Traveler in 1990. Before that, the Harvard graduate held posts at the New York Times and Newsday.

Given his level of experience, Mr. Wallace seems poised to bring more of a roll-up-the-shirt sleeves attitude to the editorial directorship.

Mr. Evans observed of his former deputy: “Tom Wallace is an exceptionally good manager of people and resources.”

The effect of the change remains to be seen.

“It’s not the kind of thing that has a bottom-line impact,” Reed Phillips, managing partner of the media investment bank DeSilva and Phillips, said. “Where it could have an impact is on the editors at the various magazines.”

Indeed, the news is sure to spark a scrambling round of musical chairs among editors of glossy magazines, especially since the top job at Conde Nast Traveler- as plum as any in the field – is up for grabs.