Time (magazine)
- TIME redirects here, for other meanings see Time.
Time (whose trademark is capitalized TIME) is a weekly American newsmagazine, similar to Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. A European edition (Time Europe, formerly known as Time Atlantic) is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition (Time Asia) is based in Hong Kong. A Canadian edition (Time Canada) is based in Toronto. The South Pacific edition, covering Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, is based in Sydney. In some advertising campaigns, the magazine has suggested that through a backronym the letters TIME stand for "Today Information Means Everything."
History
TIME was co-founded in 1923 by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, making it the first weekly news magazine in the United States. The two had previously worked together as chairman and managing editor of the Yale Daily News. Hadden was a rather carefree figure, who liked to tease Luce and saw Time as something important but also fun. That accounts for its tone, which many people still criticize as too light for serious news and more suited to its heavy coverage of celebrities (including politicians), the entertainment industry, and pop culture. It set out to tell the news through people, and for many decades the magazine's cover was of a single person. The first issue of Time was published on 1923, featuring on its cover Joseph G. Cannon, the retired Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. People was originally inspired by Time's People page.
On Hadden's death in 1929, Luce became the dominant man at Time and a major figure in the history of 20th-century media.
According to "Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise 1923-1941" by Robert Elson, "Roy Edward Larsen […] was to play a role second only to Luce's in the development of Time Inc." In his book, "The March of Time, 1935-1951," Raymond Fielding also noted that Larsen was "originally circulation manager and then general manager of Time, later publisher of Life, for many years president of Time, Inc., and in the long history of the corporation the most influential and important figure after Luce."
Around the time they were raising US$100,000 from rich Yale alumni like J.P. Morgan & Co., publicity man Martin Egan and J.P. Morgan & Co. banker Dwight Morrow, Henry Luce and Briton Hadden hired Larsen in 1922 – although Larsen was a Harvard graduate and Luce and Hadden were Yale graduates. After Hadden died in 1929, Larsen purchased 550 shares of Time Inc., using money he obtained from selling RKO stock which he had inherited from his father, who was the head of the B.F. Keith theatre chain in New England. Although after Briton Hadden's death the largest Time Inc. stockholder was Henry Luce, who ruled the media conglomerate in an autocratic fashion, "at his right hand was Larsen," Time Inc.'s second-largest stockholder, according to "Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise 1923-1941". In 1929, Roy Larsen was also named a Time Inc. director and a Time Inc. vice-president.
At the time of Henry Luce's death in 1967, the Time Inc. stock which Luce owned was worth about US$109 million and yielded him a yearly dividend income of more than US$2.4 million, according to "The World of Time Inc: The Intimate History Of A Changing Enterprise 1960-1989" by Curtis Prendergast. The value of the Larsen family's Time Inc. stock was now worth about $80 million during the 1960s and Roy Larsen was both a Time Inc. director and the chairman of its Executive Committee, before serving as Time Inc.'s vice-chairman of the board until the middle of 1979. According to the September 10, 1979 issue of The New York Times, "Mr. Larsen was the only employee in the company's history given an exemption from its policy of mandatory retirement at age 65."
After "Time" magazine began publishing its weekly issues in March 1923, Roy Larsen was able to increase its circulation by utilizing U.S. radio and movie theatres around the world to promote both "Time" magazine and the politics of the U.S. corporate interests which Time Inc. served. According to "The March of Time, 1935-1951" book, "As early as 1924, Larsen had brought 'Time' into the infant radio business with the broadcast of a 15-minute sustaining quiz show entitled 'Pop Question' which survived until 1925." Then, according to the same book, "In 1928 […] Larsen undertook the weekly broadcast of a 10-minute program series of brief news summaries, drawn from current issues of 'Time' magazine […] which was originally broadcast over 33 stations throughout the United States."
Larsen next arranged for a 30-minute radio program, titled "The March of Time", to be broadcast over CBS, beginning on March 6, 1931. Each week, his "The March of Time" radio program presented a dramatization of the week's news for its listeners. As a result of this radio program, "Time" magazine was brought "to the attention of millions previously unaware of its existence," according to "Time Inc.: The Intimate History Of A Publishing Enterprise 1923-1941", and this led to an increased circulation of the magazine during the 1930s. Between 1931 and 1937, Larsen's "The March of Time" radio program was broadcast over CBS radio and between 1937 and 1945 it was broadcast over NBC radio – except for the 1939 to 1941 period when it was not aired.
Controversy involving Time arose in the summer of 1994. After O.J. Simpson was arrested for allegedly murdering his wife and her friend, multiple publications carried his mugshot. Notably, Time published an edition featuring an altered mugshot, darkening his skin and reducing the size of the prisoner ID number. This appeared on newsstands right next to an unaltered picture by Newsweek. Outcry from minority rights groups followed. Time illustrator Matt Mahurin was the one to alter the image, saying later that he "wanted to make it more artful [sic], more compelling."
Time became part of Time Warner in 1989 when Warner Communications and Time, Inc. merged. Since 2000, the magazine has been part of AOL Time Warner, which subsequently reverted to the name Time Warner in 2003.
Style
Time has always had its own writing style, parodied most famously in 1938 by Wolcott Gibbs in an article in The New Yorker: "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind […] Where it all will end, knows God." The early days of incessantly inverted sentences and "beady-eyed tycoons" and "great and good friends", however, have long since vanished.
The magazine has only ever published one official editorial, in 1974, calling for the resignation of Richard Nixon.
Time is also known for its signature red border, which only changed once in the magazine's 80-year history – the issue released shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, which featured a black border to show mourning.
Person of the Year
The magazine's most famous feature over its eighty years has been the annual Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) cover story, in which Time recognizes the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news. Despite the title, the recipient is not necessarily an individual — for instance, in 1983 the personal computer was recognized as "Machine of the Year".
In 1999, Albert Einstein was chosen by Time as Person of the Century.
Controversy has occasionally arisen due to the designation of hated figures as "Persons of the Year". The distinction is supposed to go to the person who, for good or ill, has most affected the course of the year; it is therefore not necessarily an honor or a reward. In the past, such figures as Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin have been Men of the Year.
In the Internet vote for Person of the year, both professional wrestler Mick Foley (in 1998) and Japanese television performer Masashi Tashiro (in 2001) have been chosen as Person of the Year by block votes (These vote results were deemed invalid by Time).
Time For Kids
Written by young reporters, Time For Kids is a division magazine of Time Magazine that is especially published for children and is mainly distributed in classrooms. TFK contains some national news, a "Cartoon of the Week", and a variety of articles concerning popular culture that young U.S. citizens may be interested in. An annual issue concerning the environment is distributed near the end of the U.S. school term. The publication hardly ever reaches above fifteen pages front and back. It is used in many schools.
Trivia
- This magazine was mentioned in the movie Ri¢hie Ri¢h in an attempt for Warner Bros. to use one of their own magazine companies instead of have a third-party mention.[citation needed]
- Time magazine has an online archive with the ASCII text for every article published. The articles are indexed and were converted from scanned images using optical character recognition technology. There are still minor errors in the text that are remnants of the conversion into text.
- The magazine follows French spellings for some words, such as élite (with an accent).
Notable persons in the history of Time
- Robert D. Simon 1950-1987, Time Life International
- Will Lang Jr. 1936-1968, Time Life International
External links
- Time online
- Time Archive - Archive of all magazines and covers from 1923 through present
- Table of Contents of the Inaugural Issue on March 3, 1923
- Time Europe
- Time Asia
- Time Canada
- Time For Kids
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