After Fetching a High Price, Time Magazine Moves Into a New Era

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When Time magazine started in 1923, it hit upon a popular formula: short, punchy items that aggregated the week’s events and came in an entertaining package. But the newsweekly could never compete with the digital version of its own blueprint: the internet’s bloggers, explainers, listicles and 30-second videos.

Time’s sales and profits, like those of most print publications, have been shrinking every year, a situation that made it difficult to sell the magazine, even with its storied past.

In March, Meredith, which agreed to buy Time Inc. in November, announced that it would put Time magazine up for sale, along with Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money. After nearly six months, Time found its new owners when the software titan Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, agreed to pay $190 million in cash for the magazine. Mr. Benioff said he had “always loved it” in a text message interview with The New York Times.

The auction was more complex than Meredith executives had expected. The Des Moines-based publisher specializes in titles focused on home and lifestyle topics, and its advertising business is not designed for news and sports publications. Selling the four publications had always been the plan.

Alan Murray, the chief content officer of the former Time Inc. brands, who helped lead the process, and Meredith’s banking adviser, Citigroup, placed potential bidders into tiered groups. The groups were based on several factors, including the ability to pay and the level of seriousness. Meredith considered selling all the titles together but soon settled on individual transactions. Money will most likely be bundled with Fortune when it is sold.

“It was a learning process for me, and these things just take a lot longer than you think they would,” Mr. Murray said.

Marc Benioff does things his own way: “I didn’t realize two weeks ago I was going to buy Time.”

Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money should be sold by the end of the year, he said. “There are very healthy, advanced conversations going on,” he added, though he declined to comment on specific suitors. “I’m optimistic.”

Meredith fended off a $325 million offer for Time from David J. Pecker, the media executive who has become a key witness in a federal investigation into President Trump. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Pecker, who publishes The National Enquirer, suppressed the story of a former Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to federal prosecutors.

Until a few weeks ago, Mr. Benioff was nearing an agreement to acquire Fortune and Money, according to four people familiar with the sales process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. He switched his preference to Time when he decided its business was stronger, one of the people said.

Reed Phillips, a longtime investment banker specializing in media transactions, said the purchase price was surprisingly high.

“For a business in decline, that’s a big number,” he said. “It seems that when billionaires buy media assets, it’s almost like they’re making a nonprofit donation. They’re not doing this as a moneymaker. This is more of a cause.”

Meredith had been asking as much as $200 million for Fortune as recently as May, two of the people said. Fortune benefits from a lucrative conference business, but a big share of those profits comes from an event it produces in China for which a municipality pays most of the cost, the people said.

Sports Illustrated, which was priced in the area of $150 million, has drawn intense interest from multiple suitors, including sports figures, the people said. Endeavor, the powerhouse agency representing sports clients and Hollywood talent, considered buying the title but backed off after it decided the magazine wasn’t a fit with its main business, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

Mr. Benioff is the latest tech billionaire to take the reins of a historic news brand. Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, bought The Washington Post in 2013, and last year, Laurene Powell Jobs, who heads the Emerson Collective and is the widow of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, bought a majority stake of The Atlantic magazine.

Media outlets have also become attractive to billionaires focused on philanthropic endeavors. Mr. Benioff has spoken out on the gender pay gap and protested an Indiana law that critics said discriminated against people who are gay or transgender. He said he would stay away from Time’s editorial decisions.

But the re-emergence of billionaire media proprietors isn’t a sign the news profession is bouncing back, said Kyle Pope, the editor in chief of the Columbia Journalism Review.

“Let’s not read anything more into this about the health of newsmagazines,” he said. “Most papers and magazines across the country are still desperate.”

He added: “Iconic magazines like Time will always have a suitor because people like Benioff will always want to own these things. It’s a good way to keep these titles going, but it doesn’t seem like it’s good for journalism writ large.”

With Time, Mr. Benioff and his wife will face challenges. The magazine’s revenue inched past $170 million last year with profits around $25 million, according to two of the people familiar with its finances.

Expenses at Meredith’s magazine division grew by more than $566 million with the addition of Time Inc., while profits shrank by more than a third to $98 million in the 12 months ending in June, when the company reports its fiscal year.

As part of the Time deal, Meredith will continue to provide shared services for the magazine, helping Mr. Benioff save on print and ink costs. Marketing and subscription fulfillment will also be included in that agreement.

Walter Shapiro, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice who spent over 10 years at Time during the 1980s and ’90s, said he had stopped reading the magazine after Meredith acquired it but was considering renewing his subscription after the sale.

“They need to go back to a much more traditional word-filled product,” he said, comparing Time with The Economist, a text-heavy magazine that has fared well. “They need to take a deeper look and not just with investigative reporting. That’s how they’ll differentiate themselves now.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Fading Time Fetches a High Price. Can a Billionaire Make It Shine Again?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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