Some of Griffin’s decisions and suggestions which evidently did not sit well with others at the company included bringing in outside consultants, insisting that all Time Inc. magazines carry his name on their respective mastheads, and repeatedly referring to his Roman Catholic faith during meetings, even comparing Time Inc. to the Vatican.

Griffin has not commented on his departure, but a source close to him told The New York Times, anonymously, that his exit is not as neat and simple as Bewkes and co. would make it out to be:

Jack’s exit had nothing to do with management style and everything to do with the question of whether Time is manageable so long as entrenched interests fiercely resist the change necessary to position the organization for the future. Fortunately, the team Jack leaves behind is first rate and he wishes them all the best of success.

The departure is seen by some analysts as a stumbling block for Time Inc., which has to contend with trying to attract readers and advertisers alike as competition from other digital publishers grows.

Here is Bewkes’ complete memo, via Media Memo’s All Things Digital:

To: Time Inc. Colleagues

From: Jeff Bewkes

Subject: Jack Griffin

I regret to inform you that Jack Griffin is leaving his position as Chairman and CEO of Time Inc. Although Jack is an extremely accomplished executive, I concluded that his leadership style and approach did not mesh with Time Inc. and Time Warner.

Until a permanent successor is identified, Time Inc. will be led by an experienced interim management committee, reporting directly to me, composed of Howard Averill, Maurice Edelson and John Huey. You will be hearing from them within the next several days regarding their plans during this transitional period.

This company and its executive team have made many important advances in the last few years. Throughout, you have distinguished yourselves with professionalism and dedication to your craft, and as a result of that hard work the company’s momentum has been restored.

With our deep and talented pool of employees, I’m confident that during this transitional period Time Inc. will continue to grow and prosper, and that you will continue the brilliant work that has defined our company.

Jeff

h/t The New York Times

According to a new report in the New York Observer, there have been no active libel suits against Time Inc. or the New York Times Company (which owns the Times, The Boston Globe, and a handful of local papers around the country) for almost a year. Comparing that to the 10 to 15 cases the Times Company is accustomed to dealing with on a yearly basis, this absence suggests the beginning of a new era of libel law, and the blogosphere holds responsibility.

For starters, try Googling a random celebrity. There are probably thousands, if not millions of negative comments written about them. The threat of a less-than-flattering newspaper article seems to pale in comparison to the masses of faceless meanies with a bone to pick online.

Papers can immediately publish corrections to nullify a hostile situation with unhappy interviewees. And in return, those interviewees can take to the Web themselves and clear their own name in a public forum. Even the Internet’s negative effect on newspaper and magazine revenue has played a role – with revenue no longer steadily flowing into the print journalism industry because of all the free news online, corporations like Time Inc. aren’t trying to waste time and money in court.

Clearly, the media world is still rife with opportunities to sue, but the Observer predicts this to be the end of traditional libel as we know it. For anyone feeling nostalgic, may we recommend renting Absence of Malice and letting Sally Field act out the drama of the golden age of defamation for you.

It has been axiomatic in publishing circles that weekly magazines have long been most vulnerable to the new digital information age in which we now find ourselves. Adding to that a historic ad recession for the last year or two, publishers have found themselves in what’s been called the “perfect storm” for weekly titles. And as we have written before, Entertainment Weekly has not been immune to rumors of its imminent demise, at least its print version.

Its in that context that MediaWeek‘s Lucia Moses reports

With entertainment news available on TV and the Web 24/7, Entertainment Weekly is under pressure to get its highly perishable programming content to subscribers in time to plan their weekend viewing, or it risks irrelevancy.

To preserve that relevance, the Time Inc. weekly is tweaking its delivery schedule to get copies to its 1.7 million subs earlier. Starting with the April 9 issue, 97 percent of subscribers will get delivery by Friday, up from 89 percent now. Newsstand copies (less than 3 percent of circulation) for the most part will still go on sale Thursday and Friday.

EW will have to move its close 12 hours earlier to 3 p.m. Tuesday for the delivery change, as Time Inc. sibling People recently did, giving staffers less time to break news.:

The quick reaction is the tired cliche that EW is just “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” In fact, a former Entertainment Weekly EIC (and current Twitter-obsessed gadfly) Jeff Jarvis tweeted that very idea, writing: “Hate to say it, but my old EW is going into deck-chair mode.”

Well here’s where he’s wrong. To ensure that EW gets delivered by Friday each week, Time Inc. has decided to add a fourth printing plant. As publisher Ray Chelstowski told MediaWeek, the addition of a fourth plant to move up delivery is “a big investment the company’s making in the brand.” He’s right, and perhaps the reason behind this move is that ad pages at the magazine have been up 28% in the first quarter of 2010. More importantly, the move to a pre-weekend delivery schedule is nothing new in the world of weekly magazines; People made a similar move a few years ago, as did US Weekly, and both moves have been viewed as both smart and successful strategic moves.

Is Entertainment Weekly now “out of the woods?” Absolutely not; shifting their publishing schedule does not make them immune to the market pressures they faced earlier. But to immediately claim this is bad news reveals how little one understands about the current business model, and neglects to recognize the enormous financial backing Time Inc. is committing. It’s not a sign of imminent demise – its a huge vote of confidence.

Update: The New York Post reports that Eric Pooley is about to be named deputy editor, second in command to new Editor-in-Chief Josh Tyrangiel.

It smells like Time And it looks like Time. Except it’s BusinessWeek. Hah!

Since Norman Pearlstine, former Editor-in-Chief of Time Inc., joined Bloomberg as Chief Content Officer, Time Inc. staffers have slowly been trickling over to join him. First, it was Josh Tyrangiel, who now serves as BusinessWeek’s Editor in Chief. Then, it was Arthur Hochstein, Time’s “legendary” art director, who stepped down in 2009 and will now be consulting for both BusinessWeek and Time. Now, sources tell the New York Post, more Time Inc. staffers plan to move to Bloomberg in the coming weeks in order to “reunite” with Pearlstine.

Pearlstine stepped down as Editor in Chief at Time Inc. in 2005 and became a Senior Advisor to Time Warner. John Huey Jr., former Editorial Director, assumed the helm at Time Inc. and since then, it has slowly been sinking. Martha Nelson’s “People Group” (made up of EW, People and InStyle) is the only one with successful–or at least not failing–magazines. And with this latest rumor that Time Inc. staffers plan to jump ship, it seems as if Huey is having some trouble keeping his group together.

Writing for the NY Post Keith Kelly reports:

Hochstein’s predecessor, BusinessWeek Art Director Andrew Horton, left the magazine Friday, after having joined in 2007 and worked with former editor Steve Adler on the mag’s last redesign.

Hochstein was part of the team that won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2007 and an award in 2002 for Time’s 9/11 coverage. He will continue doing some consulting work for Time Inc. Hochstein actually stepped down as Time’s art director at the end of last year, and was replaced by his deputy, D.W. Pine.

Pearlstine, on the other hand, seems to seems to have assembled a loyal pack of staffers over the years. And we all know that the pack follows its alpha male. Stay tuned for updates.

StyleFeeder, a site designed to recommend which products to purchase based on previous browsing and buying, will partner with InStyle, according to the Journal, along with titles like Essence, to provide a foray into retail for the struggling publisher Time Inc.

“Advertising will always be our core, and our primary revenue stream online, but that growth is slowing,” said Fran Hauser, who oversees digital strategy for a group of Time Inc. magazines including People, InStyle and Entertainment Weekly. “Our editors are generating significant consumer demand for products in the retail market. And what StyleFeeder allows us to do is share in that value creation.”

The price of the purchase is rumored as “well into eight figures.”

All told, the deal is disheartening in so far as it reveals a lack of faith in a floundering business model that many hope may be tweaked back into relevance. A company as large as Time Inc. turning away from content toward retail indicates that might be a decreasingly likely business scenario. On the other hand, independent brands like Vice magazine have exemplified a successful publishing model in a time of economic mayhem by embracing in-house advertising and working directly with brands. So maybe Time Inc. is just catching up.

The “Hulu for magazines” joint venture spearheaded by John Squires officially has a name: Next Issue Media. According to Folio, the partnership has some real heavyweights behind it: Time Inc., Meredith, Hearst, Condé Nast and News Corporation. All of which represent some serious old media muscle, but will they be able to compete in the digital marketplace?

AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka has a nice summary of the steep obstacles they will face, which include getting Amazon and Apple onboard and, well, creating a product that people want to buy:

They’ll have to convince consumers who already have billing relationships with Amazon, Apple and other vendors to sign up with yet another service.

They’ll have to convince device makers to play along with the strategy, which runs counter to many of their own plans. Both Amazon and Apple, for instance, have intentionally created closed systems that give them control of both devices and distribution.

They’ll have to create content consumers want to buy. The new product can’t simply be a digital version of the magazines they’re already printing: That’s already available on the Web, and consumers have shown almost no interest in paying for it, and advertisers haven’t fully embraced it either.

At that, the New York Observer‘s John Koblin reports that John Squires has been a powerful driving force behind the venture; what Squires can accomplish by sheer force of will should not be underestimated.

A quick GoDaddy search reveals that nextissuemedia.com is registered to CooperKatz & Company, a “New York based marketing and public relations firm specializing in technology, financial and professional services, trade associations and consumer products,” the name of which appears on some of the joint venture’s press releases.

Today, the day of reckoning is upon us as Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc. have announced their plan to save the world, anti-trust laws be damned. (Let’s just assume their lawyers are better than ours.)

Here’s the prescription: all of the old white men from all of the companies will work together to “develop open standards” for a “digital storefront” — that is, or sounds like, the much ballyhooed iTunes for Magazines. Then comes the development of technology that will allow readers to “enjoy their favorite media content” on portable devices including phones, e-readers and laptops. From today’s press release:

The goal of this digital initiative is fourfold, to create: a highly featured common reading application capable of rendering the distinctive look and feel of each publication; a robust publishing platform optimized for multiple devices, operating systems and screen sizes; a consumer storefront offering an extensive selection of reading options; and a rich array of innovative advertising opportunities.

It’s as ambitious as ever, but when every competitor with money is all in, the risk is either enormous or nonexistent, depending on how you look at it. From a business standpoint, no company will likely be outdone by another because of the teamwork aspect. But if it fails, are we kissing magazines goodbye for good?

The project, as previously noted, will be headed by an interim leader, Time Inc.’s John Squires, who notes that “Once purchased, this content will be ‘unlocked’ for consumers to enjoy anywhere, anytime, on any platform.” It’s only the purchasing that sounds problematic, considering magazine websites can already be accessed “anywhere, anytime” on cell phones, computers, readers and even mp3 players. For free. But hopefully, the technological firepower this group will have at its disposal will work to improve on the current e-iterations we have. If it’s out there, this supergroup plans to perfect it.

And what of the money?

Advertisers will be able to utilize innovative formats that benefit from the highly engaging, interactive nature of this new medium. In addition to entirely new magazine and newspaper reading experiences, content selections may ultimately include books, comic books, blogs and other media.

Enjoy the free blogs while they last.

The full release is below:

LEADING PUBLISHERS FORM VENTURE TO OFFER CONSUMERS
NEW DIGITAL STOREFRONT AND PORTABLE READING EXPERIENCE

Initiative Will also Offer Marketers Rich Array of Innovative Advertising Opportunities

New York, NY, December 8, 2009 – Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc. today jointly announced that they have entered into an independent venture to develop open standards for a new digital storefront and related technology that will allow consumers to enjoy their favorite media content on portable digital devices.

The goal of this digital initiative is fourfold, to create: a highly featured common reading application capable of rendering the distinctive look and feel of each publication; a robust publishing platform optimized for multiple devices, operating systems and screen sizes; a consumer storefront offering an extensive selection of reading options; and a rich array of innovative advertising opportunities.

Beyond the publications of the equity partners, the venture will welcome other publishers to offer their content via this new digital platform. Publishers will derive revenue from content and advertising sales, as well as from print subscriptions.

“For the consumer, this digital initiative will provide access to an extraordinary selection of engaging content products, all customized for easy download on the device of their choice, including smartphones, e-readers and laptops,” explained John Squires, the venture’s interim managing director. “Once purchased, this content will be ‘unlocked’ for consumers to enjoy anywhere, anytime, on any platform.”

For publishers and advertisers, the venture will offer an attractive, cost-efficient, consumer-focused environment. Advertisers will be able to utilize innovative formats that benefit from the highly engaging, interactive nature of this new medium. In addition to entirely new magazine and newspaper reading experiences, content selections may ultimately include books, comic books, blogs and other media.

For the hardware, software and retail industries, the initiative will provide dynamic new business opportunities by organizing a library of quality content with a common format and technical specifications. The venture partners represent an unduplicated audience of 144.6 million according to Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI). By the end of 2010, Forrester Research estimates that 10 million e-readers will be sold in the U.S., and according to m:Metrics (comScore), there will be over 50 million smartphones in the U.S. by the end of 2010.

Writing for the NY Post, Keith Kelly had previously reported last Thursday that layoffs would be coming after several staffers would volunteer for buyouts.

“The biggest magazines in the Time Inc. empire — People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money — should find out today how many volunteers have stepped forward to accept buyout packages.

It appears that not enough staffers stepped forward for a buyout to preclude further cuts in staffing. The spokesperson for Time Inc continued, “Today’s layoffs will mean the vast majority of layoffs announced earlier this month will be complete.”

At this point, no numbers have been confirmed as to total staffers cut.

Some of the biggest rivals in magazine publishing are close to a deal that would combine their forces in an effort to resuscitate a dying print industry. Titans of the media world — including Condé Nast, Heart and Time Inc. — are working to form an alliance that would recreate magazines for a digital age, in a plan that includes new mobile iterations sold in an iTunes-like store, as well as print magazines, according a report in The Observer. It’s like a publisher’s version of Voltron.

That means most of the country’s largest, most influential magazines — People, Time, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker — all in one place, so desperate to survive this Great Print Depression that one group no longer believes they can provide the fix that will put them ahead of their peers. The only way we’ll get out of this, they seem to be saying, is if we all pour every resource into the reinvention of a medium. Together.

Leaked Time Inc. memos hinted at such a supergroup back in September, revealing the consideration of an alliance to compete with devices like Amazon’s Kindle. “Handwritten notes indicate Time Inc. executives have discussed the new venture with other magazine publishers, including Conde Nast, Meredith, and Hearst,” reported one source.

Now, the deal is “imminent.” In his piece, Observer media maven John Koblin reveals Time Inc.’s John Squires as the interim chief of the project, charged with “generating interest” and insisting publishers “pull together.” The anonymous sources Koblin uses to bolster his case seem optimistic, but cautious and vague:

“The really, really hard part is that you’ve got so many different kinds of devices running on different operating systems. And how do you handle that? The consortium provides one point of contact for the consumer. When you come to the main store, you can get the content any way you want.”

And though Squires refused to comment for the piece, Koblin added relevant quotes past interviews with the Time Inc. digital futurist:

“With magazines, the form has to change,” [Squires] continued. “All I’m saying is that there are ways to design magazines differently for that kind of experience that’ll be attractive and will feel different to a consumer.”

It smells too big to fail, but is the innovation there? If the names being tossed around are a proper indication, money won’t be an issue, but as a consumer, you’re left waiting, hoping the ideas will follow.

In the next three months, Time Inc. will slash 280 jobs, whittling away at iconic titles like Sports Illustrated, Essence, and People. Time also underwent a big round of cuts in early 2007, but this is still major news. Why is it going over so quietly, especially in light of the wave of Condéfreude last month?According to documents filed with the New York State Department of Labor unearthed by Media Decoder, Time Inc. plans on laying off 280 employees in New York between November 2 and January 31. This is less than the 400-500 layoffs previous estimated by Media Decoder, and comprises about 3% of Time Inc.’s 9000 employees, but it’s still a body blow. This could be a canny move if the company is planning on getting webbier — and maybe even remerging with AOL — but its constrictive effects will no doubt ripple through the industry.

Details are still murky, but small-ish mag Fortune Small Business will close down entirely, and Sports Illustrated, People, Essence, and Entertainment Weekly will definitely face staff cuts. Gawker’s Ryan Tate reports that “Time Inc. will offer those who accept buyouts an additional 13 weeks of pay — three months! — in addition to two weeks of pay for every year of service.”

The contrast between the muted reaction to Time’s layoffs and the tooth-gnashing, garment-rending reaction to Condé Nast’s layoffs is revealing. News of Condé’s McKinsey audit provided a steady drumbeat of schadenfreude and vague dread throughout the summer. When Condé bit the bullet in October and announced that it was shuttering four magazines and it was reported that about 180 Condé employees were getting laid off, days of op-eds and condolences followed.

The closure of Gourmet, a beloved, authoritative 68-year-old title, had a lot to do with that; Fortune Small Business just doesn’t get the same sort of love. But more broadly, Condé is seen as a symbol of magazine work as a patrician undertaking. Even talk of minor budget cutbacks at Vogue or Vanity Fair, much less The New Yorker, sets off swoons and cackles among columnists, bloggers, and the Gawker commenting set. Time Inc. just doesn’t seem to have the same cachet. But that doesn’t lessen the collective loss to journalism as a large industry — and to the lives of its staffers — posed by its latest layoffs.

Writing for the NY Times, Stephanie Clifford reports:

Time Inc., publisher of magazines including Time, Fortune and People, is coordinating its announcement with the third-quarter earnings report of its parent, Time Warner, sources said. The earnings report is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

The $100 million in cuts is expected to come largely from layoffs, said sources, who asked to be anonymous as they were not authorized to discuss the decision. No magazines appeared likely to close, one source said.

At Time Inc., cuts have already been heavy. A year ago, it announced it was dismissing about 600 people, or 6 percent of its staff. Since 2007, it has shut magazines including Business 2.0, Cottage Living, Southern Accents and Life, which it had revived as a newspaper supplement. A stricter expense-account policy has been in place for some time, and some magazines have decreased the weight of the paper they use. And last week, Fortune announced that it would no longer be published every other week and would reduce its frequency to 18 issues a year, from 25.

Now, on the eve of AOL’s split with Time Warner, a tipster tells Business Insider’s Nicholas Carlson that the heads of AOL and Time Inc. met for more than three hours to discuss a possible “co spin-off” from their parent company. From Carlson’s tipster:

Time Inc CEO Ann Moore and Tim (AOL) met last week with some of their confidants to talk about a potential “co spin-off” of the Time Inc and AOL. While synergies have been talked about in the past, turns out TW thinks that their could be serious benefit from this (you know what they are) merger and spin-off.

In the months leading up to the spinoff, AOL has made no secret of its desire to shift its focus to the “content business.” The company has a huge leg up thanks to its portal, AOL.com, which is capable of driving massive traffic to sites in its MediaGlow network with relatively low profiles off the Web, sites like Asylum, LemonDrop, and Politics Daily.

With more recognizable Time Inc. brands on the docket, they could at once burnish their reputation as a web publisher, boost their aol.com traffic, and give refuge to Time brands that are being beaten up by the current print environment. There would be some issues of precedence. For instance, if AOL owned Sports Illustrated, would their well-trafficked in-house sports blog FanHouse be folded in, or would it retain a separate identity? Wallet Pop versus Fortune, People versus PopWatch … the list goes on. With a baseline of guaranteed web traffic, would underperforming Time Inc. print publications go Web-only en masse? How many employees on each side would be considered redundant and likely get fired?

These are nuts-and-bolts questions worth asking, but in the abstract, a merger would present a lot of juicy opportunities, and not just for content-hungry AOL. Whereas AOL was the obvious loser in the AOL-Time Warner merger, Time Inc. would be the loser unit this time around, hence the tipster’s key line that “TW thinks that their could be serious benefit from this.” Wrapping Time Inc. in with AOL would give Time Warner an exit strategy with respect to its troubled print unit, and would have the bonus effect of giving Jeff Bewkes an escape hatch from his comments to the effect that Time Inc. is too precious to sell to a third party.

Carlson says the deal “makes sense,” but is skeptical: “we agree that there’s a very low chance of this deal being successful given the cultural difference between the companies.  It would just be a mini-AOL-Time Warner all over again.” Would it, though? The focus seems a lot narrower this time; there’s a lot more synergy between a company that wants to reinvent itself as a web publisher and a (still overwhelmingly) print publishing company. At this point, the odds are still against this happening, but now that AOL knows what it is and knows what it wants to be, Gerald Levin‘s and Steve Case‘s synergistic vision of ten years ago seems a lot less like a pipe dream.

“[T]he readership is solid, the readership is holding up, the readers are happy, the titles are thriving,” he continued, saying that he believes Time Warner will still own magazines five years down the line. He also took the opportunity to deny that Time Warner had any interest in buying NBC Universal. But is the company’s CEO really the most reliable source when it comes to potential business dealings? He’s trying to run a business after all.

It seems counterintuitive, but it’s important to recognize the context of Bewkes’ statements when it comes to Time Inc. gossip, considering he has the most to gain (or lose!) when it comes time for negotiations. Anything he says or does has the potential to affect a sale price. It’s also worth remembering the old adage that says everything is for sale — for the right price. The struggling magazine division of a huge conglomerate is no exception and if Time Warner were shopping it, they would want to do so in private and on their terms, not with the media as a middleman.

Then, there’s the source reporting the CEO’s quotes to consider. The article, entitled “Time Warner CEO: We’ll still own Time Inc. in five years” by Jeff Bercovici, was posted at the DailyFinance blog, part of the AOL network owned by none other than Time Warner. The writer discloses the connection briefly but comments that Time Warner will not own AOL “for much longer.” Still, when it comes to business journalism and the sensitive large-scale dealings being covered, readers would do best to keep a skeptical eye and writers should stay candid about their connections as they set the tone for the public conversation. You never know how it could affect the bottom line.

Yet here’s a staggering statistic about Detroit, put in context by Okrent: “Three years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, unemployment in that city hit a peak of 11%. In Detroit, the unemployment rate is 28.9%. That’s worth spelling out: twenty-eight point nine percent.”

But, as Okrent says, the tragedy of Detroit “has long been a slow unwinding that seemed to remove it from the rest of the country” — and even the death throes of the auto industry have brought with it a weird kind of schadenfreude, between scolding the Big Three CEOs for their private jets to Washington and clucking about how American cars aren’t as good as foreign cars and have been unduly protected (never mind articles like this: “Five Reasons Not to Buy American Cars“). Considering that Detroit is basically a one-industry town (and that industry sure ain’t newspapers!), it’s hard to see Detroit as anything but pretty damn screwed.

Time Inc. wants to change that — and so they’ve kicked off an ambitious, year-long project called “Assignment: Detroit” — they bought a house, staffed it up, and will be reporting on the ground for the next year.

In a rare joint publisher’s letter, running in both Time and Fortune, Time Inc’s John Huey says this:

Why would we ever do such a thing? Because we believe that Detroit right now is a great American story. No city has had more influence on the country’s economic and social evolution. Detroit was the birthplace of both the industrial age and the nation’s middle class, and the city’s rise and fall — and struggle to rise again — are a window into the challenges facing all of modern America. From urban planning to the crisis of manufacturing, from the lingering role of race and class in our society to the struggle for better health care and education, it’s all happening at its most extreme in the Motor City.

So to that end, says Huey, they’re going to “flood the D-zone” (urk) with a phalanx of journos, photogs, bloggers and videographers from Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Money and their various dot-coms. They’ve got a blog. They’ve got a Twitter. CNN Money is running a series of videos. Hopefully for the D-zone all that will lead to a flood of money back into the city — or at least generate some interest and outrage on its behalf outside its midwestern environs.

But will the country even care? Let’s put it this way: There are no commemorative picture-books memorializing the destruction of Detroit. The city’s falling fortunes are not exactly a hidden scoop — indeed, it’s risen to a darkly acceptable punchline (the still to the right is taken from a spoof video for Cleveland tourism — and it was featured in native Michigan son Michael Moore‘s most recent film, Capitalism: A Love Story). But on the bright side, maybe that caring is nigh: “Detroit: The Death — and Possible Life — of a Great American City” is right now both the Most Read and Most Emailed story on Time.com.

So maybe the story of Detroit will end up being…a profitable one? One that generates not only the good karma of covering an important American story but the necessary clicks to justify funding it? These are of course the daily battles in media toda — if we’re gonna cover it, how are we gonna pay for it? Snark though you might about Megan Fox coverage (MEGAN FOX BOOBS! There, we just justified the time we’ve spent on this post) but the reality is stark: Investing the time and money to cover this story means somewhere, somehow, that money has to be made back. And clearly, that money hasn’t been coming from Detroit bureaus over the past few years, since so many of them have been closed one by one — including Time‘s. So you can snark on that, too, but at the end of the day this is what journalism is supposed to be about at its best: Shining a light, and helping to make things better.

Back to Detroit. Daniel Okrent is from there, and he’s the right writer for this story — a straightforward storyteller, not too maudlin, but with a few twists of the knife:

If, like me, you’re a Detroit native who recently went home to find out what went wrong, your first instinct is to weep. If you live there still, that’s not the response you’re looking for. Old friends and new acquaintances, people who confront the city’s agony every day, told me, “I hope this isn’t going to be another article about how terrible things are in Detroit.”

Cut to the heading of the next section: “My City of Ruins.” Ouch.
The larger “ouch” comes from the fact that Okrent is not only telling a personal story along with the engrossing tale of Detroit as a city, that could easily stand on its own — it comes form the larger implications. To put it bluntly, Detroit is the canary in the coal mine — we’ve already seen that with the newspaper industry, cutting back home delivery to a few days per week, and we’ve certainly seen that with the implosion of the American auto industry over this last year (longer, surely, but this last year has been the doozy, complete with the impossilbe-sounding “B” word). Here’s Okrent:

The ultimate fate of Detroit will reveal much about the character of America in the 21st century. If what was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the nation has been brought to its knees, what does that say about our recent past? And if it can’t find a way to get up, what does that say about our future?

What indeed. I guess Time Inc. will spend the next year telling us.

Related:
Detroit: The Death — and Possible Life — of a Great American City [Time]
Assignment Detroit: Why Time Inc. is in Motown [Time]
“The Green Car Economy That May Well Be Detroit’s Last Hope” [Fortune]
Investment in a City of Struggles [NYT]

Also Related, Ironically…

…and sadly:

NBCBayArea.com claims that Time Inc.’s strategy for entering the e-reader market “are on a fast track,” and that they are seeking to unveil its plans within the next three months. The publishing giant appears to be looking to leverage its estimated 100,000,000 readers in hopes to define the future consumption of magazine content.

The article continues:

The Time Inc. presentation, titled “New Platforms & Business Models for Publishers,” is dated June 25, 2009, which shows how rapidly Time’s internal strategy shifted. The version obtained by NBC shows handwritten notes updating the presentation, which circulated as recently as August, which indicate Time plans to launch something within the next three months.

“We’re speaking with a number of hardware and software companies as well as other content companies about various projects,” said Time Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Bridges when asked about the project. “At this point we don’t have anything else to say publicly.”

However, the end of the piece makes the interesting revelation:

The presentation concludes that Time Inc. and other partners should form a new, jointly owned company. Time Inc. might spin out its Maghound service, a service which lets consumers bundle multiple magazines together into a single monthly subscription, to form the base of the joint venture. The company is also considering acquiring other businesses to jumpstart the venture.

Handwritten notes indicate Time Inc. executives have discussed the new venture with other magazine publishers, including Conde Nast, Meredith, and Hearst.

Magazines have begun entering this space via iPhone applications, and with dwindling circulation numbers, publishers are interested in the market as well. News Corp. is reported to be looking into its own electronic reader for its large newspaper business. And Hearst recently released its own plans for an e-reader in March. At that time, Time Inc. executives said they had no plans to enter the field.

Will Time Inc.’s entry into the uncertain e-reader market be a smart move? Lest we forget, this is the company that acquired AOL. However, a larger partnership with other magazine publishers could have better results.

Everyone wants to know what McKinsey will do with Conde Nast? And how will they do it? And what will it feel like?

Actually it’s fairly simple.

First they will take a number of meetings. Actually, lots and lots of meetings. They will meet with senior executives in every part of the business — HR, Production, Finance, Sales and Marketing, and yes, Editorial.  They will then put together a lot of charts with square boxes and arrows and present their findings to the top brass (people whose last name is Newhouse) plus a few others. These charts will be visual representations of how they will fix their business – cutting costs.

Apart from advising the cutting of dead weight they will primarily look to cut redundancies. By grouping  titles in similar spaces (Women’s Fashion, Men’s, Lifestyle, etc.) they can employ just one sales and marketing team, one production unit, even one communications unit. This is what happened at Time Inc., and what is likely to happen at 4 Times Square. It’s not rocket science.

Bringing in McKinsey is an admission by a corporate organization it can no longer effectively manage its own growth — they are a surcharge for having an inflexible corporate culture. So they hire well-heeled Ivy League MBA types to tell them the hard-truths that they don’t want to know, so they don’t have to do it themselves. For example – maybe 12 people don’t need to fly first class to Milan to represent Allure. But clothing allowances and limitless T&E expenses are legendary at Conde Nast – or, were; it’s safe to say that gravy train is over.

The re-design is apparently in response to a severe decline in revenue — the same article mentions that ad pages for the first half of 2009 have been down a whopping 39%.  Maybe it IS the art and layout that are keeping the advertisers away. Kelly also reports that Fortune ME Andy Serwer is not involved and quotes an unnamed source as saying “I don’t think it’s a happy situation.”

John Korpics will helm the re-design, a name that is almost synonymous with re-designing titles at Time Inc. After leaving InStyle, Korpics re-imagined Entertainment Weekly, then Money magazine – two titles whose total pages have not increased since getting a new look. A well-respected design director, Korpics has long been considered “one of Huey’s boys” by industry insiders. A senior editor at a major national magazine said of Korpics “Martha Nelson fired him from InStyle and Huey keeps looking after him.”

The notion of Huey taking care of his own is not lost on many – back in 2002 he created a bit of stir by removing Jim Seymour as Managing Editor of EW at the height of its success. In that spot he placed Rick Tetzeli, a trusted Huey ally and former deputy from his days of Fortune. Tetzeli stepped down from that spot earlier this year, getting “kicked upstairs” to run “special projects” for Time Inc.  Rumors of EW folding have only recently abated, perhaps due to the new leadership of new top man Jess Cagle.

Looking after his “boys” is not uncommon practice for Huey, as Kelly reports:

“To assuage any potentially bruised egos, Huey in the past month awarded Serwer with a new three-year contract, insiders said, which will keep him on the payroll until at least 2012.”

An industry insider who no longer works in magazine publishing said “What they’re doing with Andy is exactly what they did with Rick. Give him a contract to be nice, and let him work on a redesign. He probably has no idea if he’ll be fired.” The fact that Serwer was quoted by Kelly appears to support the idea that he is “playing nice” and still a company man. Serwer did play a touch of defense, admitting that he’s entertaining offers outside the magazine world.

Huey’s power at Time Inc. has been diluted recently, when a management restructuring redistributed the titles that he directly oversees.  Nelson, the highly respected former ME of People now oversees the very profitable “People Group” (made up of EW, People and InStyle). Bill Shapiro oversees the lifestyle group (various shelter titles including Real Simple) and Huey has the News group (Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated.) Shapiro and Nelson still technically report to Huey, but a former Time Inc staffer says “Martha has all the power now – she’s the only one with succesful magazines.”

Apart from the real success of Real Simple, InStyle and People, the once august publisher founded by Henry Luce has recently lost a lot of value in the eyes of Wall Street. And while rumors of a spin-off from the Time Warner mothership persist, Huey continues to avoid direct criticism. A recent BusinessWeek column by Jon Fine posited the Time Inc problem’s thusly:

“The current environment for selling all of Time Inc. is terrible. And before you sell, you’d want to know how much of the current bad news comes from a temporary ad downturn and how much comes from permanent structural change in the media world.”

A germane concept, but curiously absent is any notion of questionable (bad?) management decisions. The page counts of former industry stalwarts like Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated are pamphlet-esque. Is the Time empire burning? If so, why is no one pointing out that Emperor Huey has no clothes? A Google News search for “John Huey” reveals only corporate press releases, passing mentions or glowing reviews.

A number of insiders suggest that the real reason John Huey has gotten a pass from the media is that he’s a notorious leak to the press. No reporter wants to anger him for fear of losing a generous source. A 2006 New York Magazine profile written by Kurt Andersen is titled “The Good Old Boy of Time Inc.”

The Time Inc. ship has brought on a lot of water under the helm of Huey, and no one seems to be willing to report that the Titanic is sinking. Perhaps the old boy network extends beyond the hallowed halls of Time Inc.

UPDATE – Keith Kelly reports today that John Korpics has been named Creative Director to Fortune, replacing outgoing Design Director Robert Perino.

(Disclosure – my wife Geraldine Hessler worked under John Korpics in the Entertainment Weekly Art Department from ’98 to 00, then replaced him as Design Director, a title she held until 2008.)

As President and CEO of Meredith Corporation, Steve Lacy is second only to Time Inc.’s Ann Moore ranked in the Magazine Titan category of the Power Grid.  Determined by estimated overall circulation, total employees,  online buzz of proper name,  and online buzz of media affiliation, Lacy outranks other stalwarts of print including Conde Nast’s Chuck Townsend, Hearst’s Cathie Black and Rodale’s Steve Murphy.

So what makes Lacy so powerful? A publishing empire that includes powerhouse titles like Better Homes and Garden, Family Circle, and More. The estimated total circulation for all Meredith titles ranks second only to Time Inc.

Cynics might claim that by targeting an older demographic, Meredith’s circulation has largely been unaffected by the Internet revolution.  And in fact, the online traffic to the Meredith websites pales in comparison to the overall readership – in part due to really large print circulation numbers.

However, the Meredith readership also appears to be remarkably loyal and relatively wealthy, which creates an interesting paradox for ad sales. Marketers are typically eager to present their messages to these sort of eyeballs – but they also want to appeal to a younger, sexier set – definitely not the typical Meredith reader.

Nonetheless, while the Meredith powerhouse continues to grow, its digital strategy presents both a risk and an opportunity. At some point their readership will go online — and what will they find? Best to enjoy the salad days while you are in them, for you never know what the future brings.

It would be very hard to argue that Newsweek is the magazine of the moment, but Jon Meacham is number one on the list for one very good reason – the publicity around their re-launch has been quite effective. Since the Power Grid combines Online Buzz (with traditional metrics like circulation and web traffic), we can only surmise that a lot of people are Googling the Newsweek Editor.  Combine that with robust online traffic for Newsweek.com,  a slew of television appearances, and a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion, and Meacham Mania suddenly makes sense.

What else can we learn from this category of the Power Grid? It makes sense to see stalwarts Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter on the list. But it is sort of shocking that they are ranked third and seventh respectively. One can only wonder how high they’d be on this list if their digital strategy wasn’t state of the art, 1998.

Also,  could the rumors of Time Inc.’s death have been greatly exaggerated? Okay, no one has been predicting their global demise, but there are some limping members of the herd that seem pretty vulnerable right now. But three (!) of the top five editors are running magazines at Time Inc: People Powerhouse is represented by Larry Hackett at number two, Sports Illustrated’s Terry McDonnell comes in at four, and Time magazine’s managing editor Rick Stengel comes in at five.

What explains this? Online unique vistors sets them (and other Time Inc. titles) apart from many of the other magazines on the list. It turns out that the strategy of having a robust web offering wasn’t such a bad idea. Keep in mind that the revenue from these sites still represent pennies to the dollars of print ads, and sadly, that isn’t likely to dramatically change for some time. But at least they have the Power Grid.