Time (magazine)
TIME redirects here, for other meanings see Time (disambiguation).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."
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
March 3,
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. However, 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.
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.
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 â€" 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).
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.
*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.
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).
*
Robert D. Simon 1950-1987, Time Life International
*
Will Lang Jr. 1936-1968, Time Life International
*
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
