Time Warner move leaves Time Inc magazine company to fend for itself | Heidi Moore
Heidi Moore www.theguardian.com heidi-moore
<p><strong>Heidi Moore:</strong> Time magazine publisher will now stand on its own under a new CEO during an already challenging time for print publications</p>
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the Guardian
This Time Inc is different.

The venerable publisher of Time magazine will soon stand on its own as a publicly traded magazine company, away from parent company Time Warner, which will focus purely on entertainment and television. Only hours after Time Inc CEO Laura Lang gave rise to media rumors by pulling out of speaking engagements at several prominent events, the parent company announced that within the year it would spin out Time Inc and replace Lang with a successor who has not yet been named. She will stay through the transition, the company said. She has been in the post for just under a year, while her predecessor lasted half that time.

In a memo to staff, Lang, calling the news "something that people are just beginning to digest", wrote: "After considerable thought, I have decided that taking the company through a transition to the public markets is not where my passion lies."

The mystique of the Time editorship remains, even as executives cycle through the role. On Twitter, Belinda Luscombe, a Time editor-at-large, observed of the Time Inc CEO job, "a colleague remarked that job is like the Professor of Dark Arts of the publishing world".

The moves will leave the company's magazine division – including 21 titles – to fend for itself under a new CEO in challenging times for print publications. Many major Time titles have seen declining ad pages and drops in circulation, reflecting wider industry trends. Rival Newsweek shuttered its print edition in December.

While Time Warner had signaled last month that it wanted to separate Time Inc, the spinoff into a separate, publicly held company was a surprise. Previously, Time was thought to be in merger talks with another magazine company, Meredith, about merging at least some of their magazines into a new publicly traded company. Time Inc's magazines include Time, Sports Illustrated, People, InStyle, Fortune and Money. Meredith, which publishes Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes & Gardens, has 18 magazines under its umbrella.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes explained the spinoff will allow the larger company to "focus entirely on our television networks and film and TV production businesses, and improves our growth profile". He also said it will allow Time Inc to attract "a more natural stockholder base", which could mean luring investors who want to invest purely in news and publications rather than the wider world of entertainment. Time Warner has previously separated other divisions, including AOL and Time Warner Cable.

Time Inc CEO Laura Lang pulled out of multiple industry events over recent weeks, which the company attributed to speculation about the future of the magazine division.

The move by Time follows other decisions by media companies to make their publications into standalone companies. News Corp is splitting into two divisions. That will create an entertainment unit, Fox Group, and a publishing division that is the "new" News Corp, headed by CEO Robert Thomson, and which will include the Wall Street Journal and other publications. The shares of both companies will be controlled by Rupert Murdoch. The publishing division posted a $2bn net loss in the last fiscal year.