Time Inc. Sells Itself to Meredith Corp., Backed by Koch Brothers

I grew up in a home that subscribed to Time Magazine, and am young to remember how often that brand was touted in advertisements on TV. But it's been a long time since I've associated prestige with that media brand, especially after it was spun off from the actually profitable parts of Time Warner. With the exception of their "Person of the Year" tradition, which draws attention but seems to have as little actual influence as PEOPLE's sexiest man award. Quick, try to name 2 people who are not Trump/Clinton who were on TIME's shortlist last year: http://time.com/4589502/person-of-the-year-2016-shortlist/

Maybe it's a bit of confirmation bias as I don't go out of my way to read Time magazine anymore. But compare their nationally known work to that of Conde Nast, another prestigious brand and also having major revenue problems as a media company. Despite that, The New Yorker doesn't seem to have lessened at all in the rate of influential and newsworthy pieces it produces (Rowan Farrow's expose of Harvey Weinstein being one of the more recent notables [0]).

If the Koch Brothers intend to use it part of their PR wing, they have a lot to do to boost the brand so that people even pay attention.

Possibly relevant historical example: In 2010, another well-known national magazine, Newsweek, was bought from the Washington Post for $1 by a mostly unknown billionaire [0], Sidney Harman, of Harman Kardon fame. Harman died in 2011, so whatever plans he had for Newsweek for his own purposes went unrealized. It was then sold to IBT Media, a mostly unknown company owned by a somewhat controversial charismatic Christian sect [2]. Was Newsweek used to advance its founders causes? Hard to say, like TIME, I can't remember the last time a Newsweek exclusive had national influence the way the New Yorker regularly does, though some people here may faintly recall their epic fuckup about Bitcoin's founder [3]. And having an independent, private source of wealth hasn't helped Newsweek be any more stable than it was when it got sold for $1 [4].

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/business/media/newsweek-bo...

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-a...

[2] http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/03/newsweek-ibt-olivet...

[3] http://www.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/face-behind-bitcoin-24795...

[4] http://www.foliomag.com/newsweek-lays-off-impoco-others-peop...

I wonder why Bill Gates, in contrast to the Koch brothers, stays out of social and political issues. He seems to care deeply and many of his goals, such as advancing health and education, depend on politics much more than on his money.

For example, the Kochs work hard to reframe discussion of government revenue / taxes, regulation, and government overall in order to reduce all of them (whatever you think of their goals, that is the case). If Gates invested politically in his goals, there might be much more government support for health and education, via funding, research, availability to citizens, and policy innovation. Despite Gate's vast wealth, the U.S. government spends orders of magnitude more than him; a million dollars influencing politics could leverage far more resources than a million spent directly on research.

Of course, everyone would be better off if the fate of the U.S. depended on democracy - one person, one vote - and not on the manipulations and influence of three people.

You’re counting Jeff Bezos as an activist but not Rupert Murdoch? That makes no sense. Most of his media conglomerate is openly political all the time (Fox News, New York Post, The Sun etc.) while some maintains a pretense of objectivity (Wall Street Journal).

I think that's what "independence" in the media looks like. The alternative is ownership by massive conglomerates. GE owns NBC, does that make NBC more "independent" than the New York Times (which is owned by the Sulzberger family)?

Media outlets are valuable, thus your options for ownership are 1) very rich individuals or families or 2) large corporations. Which one of those did you want to see more of?

We don't truly know because we don't/can't/won't know all the stories that WaPo killed because of influence. However, worrying about stories being "killed" is the wrong way to think of the potentially nefarious effects. The much more common problem, and much harder to detect, are knowing the stories that the WaPo (or any news org) just didn't put priority into pursuing because of institutional inertia and unspoken rules.

If WaPo had a reporter/editor who specialized in particular zealous investigations into Amazon, we would likely hear murmurs and off-the-record complaints about how WaPo has been going unexpectedly soft on Amazon post-acquisition. In contrast, there is no possibility of knowing how the average Wapo tech reporter would have covered Amazon in an alternate universe in 2017.