Former top editor worries about TIME magazine's future

James Warren, poynter.org

Stengel image from article

Excerpt:

[I]f you run a small town newsroom, a big digital start-up, a cable news network, a nonprofit community weekly, a monthly magazine, an all-news radio operation, a Hollywood newsletter, whatever, listen to the words of Stengel. He was the magazine's managing editor (the top editorial position) and later served in the Obama administration as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

He did a very good job at TIME, as underscored by Samir Husni, a magazine expert at the University of Mississippi. He helped it reinvent itself (with some A-list colleagues) and regain a fair bit of its by-then somewhat diminished luster. But there's only so far you can go without investment and a smart strategy, as might be obvious to its new owner, Des Moines-based Meredith Corp.

"Henry Luce, the founder of TIME, always thought the magazine should be located in the Midwest and in fact moved it to Cleveland for one year in the 1920s," says Stengel. "But I suspect he would regard Time Inc.'s purchase by the Midwestern Meredith Corp. as a retreat not a victory." ...