Most people would say "Neither Times New Roman nor Arial".
(This is because those two fonts are the ones mostly used by people producing documents in MS Word, thus they can sometimes look "toyish", cheap, amateurish.)
Generally serif fonts are better for reading, because they keep the words together. But that is only valid if you do not have any reading problems. People with reading problems might find sanserif fonts easier to read.
Today though, the above "truth" is often believed to be more of "religion" than "fact". But remember that typography is many hundred years old, there must been reasons that serif fonts are mostly used in books...
I would recommend designing a sample page, and then print it using several different fonts (it's easy to change the font if you use styles). Different fonts give the publication a different feel. A medical journal would use other fonts than a music magazine, even if they both would use serif fonts for body text.