I just spent a week guest blogging for Jeff Bercovici’s Mixed Media column at Portfolio.comand as much fun as I had (at times) posting for what I hope is a slightly larger audience, I’m glad to be back. The very first post I wrote relayed some gossip I had heard from some investment banker types — that Time Warner was going to spin off its magazine division, Time Inc — and people at TW blew a gasket.
In fairness to them, I hadn’t called corporate communications for the official denial; I’ve spent too long in the blogosphere, I guess, and also remembered the denials I used to get calling them from Salon. (They denied they were getting rid of Susan Wyland at Real Simple, as I recall — until they did; and they really didn’t like any criticism of the AOL merger, which proved to be such genius.) And I went with one of my sources — again, a person who used to work at Time Inc on the busienss side and who is now involved in the sale of magazine companies — who said this was going to happen soon, like in the next few weeks. So: bad reporter.
But when I finally talked to the the communications people at TW, they did not ask for a retraction (in fact they said it was “unnecessary”) and stressed that what was flat-out patently not true was my assertion that this massive sale would happen “in the next few weeks.” Not that it wouldn’t happen ever or that the idea hadn’t come up more than once…
There were some very heated ripostes to my post, all of them from Time Inc employees, and while I can understand the ire of those on the business side I have to ask of anyone in editorial: Can’t you smell the coffee? The great titles of yore (Time, Fortune, SI) are losing size, readers and general juju. (The debacle at Time, hampered by a horrible redesign and a Friday pub date which keeps them from covering any news that breaks after Wednesday, is a tale no one seems to be willing to tell.) There are no new titles in the offing. As much as the people slogging my blog had their sights set on Portfolio as a disaster (and if Keith Kelly got it right Friday, which I suspect he did, those critics include SI Newhouse himself), at least Conde Nast is trying to build a new brand.
“Time Inc is a good business,” a source said, “but they have nothing on the print side coming up.” The digital future predicted so long ago is now, and while they have increased and improved their web presence, they still have to acknowledge the print audience is vanishing like that iceberg the polar bear is stepping onto…
I predict TW will indeed sell Time Inc, but next year, after Richard Parsons leaves and Jeff Bewkes takes over. This is not a bold and crazy assertion; outside of Time Inc it is almost conventional corporate wisdom. Bewkes comes from cable (HBO); Parsons may be a lawyer but he’s a reader and has some print in his blood. It would hurt him to spin off Time Inc in ways that might not bother Bewkes.
As one of my sources said, it would behoove the folks at Time Inc to be independent anyway. “Right now if you sell something at Time Inc, the TW corporation absorbs the profit. They would be much better off getting rid of Southern Progress [instead of Business 2.0] but that money would go to Time Warner. And at the end of the year they would still be saying, ‘How come you guys aren’t making any money?'”
They still might like to think of Time Inc as the jewel in the crown that is Time Warner, but that jewel is dragging the crown down. If you’re at Time Inc now and think this is idiotic apostasy, why don’t you call me in a year? Not a couple of months, you’re right: no change. But ask yourself what those old-timers who took the buyouts might have seen and if the crown was being pulled over your eyes.