If you're desperate to watch live coverage of car chases, you won't want to turn to CNN.

So says Walter Isaacson, who gets to decree things like this because, for 13 months, he has been chairman and CEO of the CNN News Group. In that job, he oversees essentially all editorial content put out under the CNN banner.

Since taking charge, he's grappled with the structural and immediate challenges facing the longtime cable news leader -- including something of an identity crisis as it became evident that Fox News Channel would assume the ratings crown, which it did last winter.

In an interview, Isaacson says CNN has just embarked on a time of stability in philosophy and personnel that should emphasize its heritage as a place where the news counts. He's particularly proud of a new Pew Research Center study that finds CNN remains the most trusted source of news on television.

"In a heavy news environment, I'd rather have more news," Isaacson says. "Fox brings on its conservative opinion programs. We have Christiane [Amanpour] and Nic Robertson. That's the one that you pretty much have to keep as your main focus."

It's an approach that would seem to help distinguish CNN from its rivals, Fox News and MSNBC. With more journalists abroad than any other U.S. news outlet, CNN has the greatest global reach when it matters. As explosions rocked the inaugural day of Colombia's new president a few days ago, for example, CNN's was the only U.S. television correspondent based there.

Depending on how ratings are gauged, CNN has increased its audience by about 65 percent compared with the same point last summer. Yet Fox's ratings have grown even more than CNN's over the same period. MSNBC, a distant third in the cable news game, has moved toward a more exclusively talk-show format, with chat shows from Phil Donahue, Curtis Sliwa and former Crossfire hosts Pat Buchanan and Bill Press.

Donahue's re-emergence, in particular, spooked CNN officials, who fretted they might dip to third place. But MSNBC's prime time ratings, while aided by Donahue and Chris Matthews of Hardball, still lag behind Fox and CNN.

A two-track approach

Isaacson came to CNN from corporate sibling Time magazine. As editor, he was seen by many within the industry to have re-invigorated the magazine by making it more accessible, with a greater acknowledgement of popular culture. At CNN, he is hailed as a serious journalist with a keen intellect.

Yet Isaacson was hired to move the channel away from its tradition that "The news is the star." Instead, he's instituted a two-track approach, where celebrity journalists present news but avoid the strong opinions that have propelled the success of Fox figures, such as cable ratings king Bill O'Reilly.

Even as CNN was laying off many longtime journalists, Isaacson spent months assembling a team of people familiar from broadcast news. Big names included Paula Zahn, formerly of CBS and Fox News, now the host of American Journal; Aaron Brown, late of ABC, CNN's lead anchor on NewsNight; Connie Chung, who has been an anchor and correspondent at all three broadcast networks; and Fredricka Whitfield, formerly at NBC. The winter marked a stretch of contract negotiations and corporate budget issues that Isaacson admits not enjoying at all. But he says CNN has emerged with its mandate "to stick to more journalism, [with] less shouting of opinions."

For example, Isaacson promises a more "button-down" approach to American Journal, CNN's high-stakes entry into the morning-show wars, and he says he expects to see Bill Hemmer join Zahn full-time on the show. Yet the program itself is a hybrid, with frequent appearances by Anderson Cooper, a former ABC news correspondent and host of that network's "reality" game show The Mole.

In the meantime, it's been a summer when cable news -- all cable news -- has lurched from stories about corporate malfeasance to Middle East conflict to abducted teens. Isaacson doesn't dismiss the abductions, which are actually declining in frequency, as a valid story but says such context is necessary.

"At Time magazine, I knew exactly which kinds of covers would sell," Isaacson says. " 'Does Heaven Exist?' Newsweek just did that, but I don't mean to knock them -- I did one when I was [at Time]. Sexy celebrities. Fad diets." (Newsweek's current cover line is actually "Visions of Heaven.")

"I also knew that if I made it my goal only to raise newsstand sales, I could ruin the magazine," he says. "You could put car chases on every hour, and our ratings would double. You could also hurt the credibility of CNN."

Some mistakes

There have been mistakes writ small -- CNN briefly ran ads last winter calling Zahn "a little bit sexy" that were received poorly, not least by Zahn -- and large. Senior CNN executive Eason Jordan was dispatched to Israel to soothe those who felt the families of Palestinian bombers were given too sympathetic a treatment, while Isaacson himself paid calls to Capitol Hill Republicans who felt the cable network was aligned with Democrats. Those criticisms appear to have abated.

Upon Isaacson's arrival last summer, CNN relaunched its Headline News channel, complete with Andrea Thompson, an anchor short on news experience but who had been an actor and model. It was refashioned anew this month (Thompson and the network have parted ways), after a year of some ratings gains but complete critical disdain. Until a month ago, Isaacson says, the lineup of programs on CNN itself was tenuous at best, with shifting times and hosts.

And now, with contracts signed and ad profits made -- according to estimates noted by The Wall Street Journal, CNN makes $293 million annually, compared with $70 million for Fox -- Isaacson says he gets to focus on the journalism. "When I came in, there was a lot of coverage of [Gary] Condit and sharks. What we want are more valid stories that have more relevance."

"We don't do car chases when the other networks do," he says. "In the past three months, we haven't taken a car chase for the sake of a car chase."

On one recent example, a car was rolling through a Los Angeles neighborhood pursued by police, tracked by television cameras from helicopters above. "We had Cheney in Saudi Arabia," Isaacson recalls. "You win on the credibility stuff. If you increase your ratings, ... you can feel pretty good about it, and don't simply feel, 'Why aren't you overtaking Fox?' "