Later that day, Griffin called Huey and demanded that Nelson apologize.

�I won’t tolerate that kind of insubordination,� Griffin said.

�I don’t think you have the juice to take out Martha,� Huey returned.

Griffin hung up and called Time Inc.’s general counsel, asking to see Huey’s contract. Huey began telling friends Griffin was preparing to fire him. Instead, Bewkes, fearing an exodus of top editorial talent, fired Griffin. (Griffin, Huey, and Nelson declined to comment on the episode).

The company drifted for the next nine months without a CEO�months when advertising continued to erode. Bewkes finally hired Laura Lang, whose experience running the digital ad firm Digitas sounded promising. But he was unhappy when, in the fall of 2012, she presented another round of declining numbers. Then, a few months later, Lang found herself in the middle of an embarrassing scandal. At the InStyle Golden Globes after-party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Lang’s husband made lewd advances toward several female Time Inc. employees, including InStyle publisher Connie Anne Phillips. Time Warner human resources got involved to clean it up. Within a few months, Phillips had been let out of her noncompete contract (she became publisher of Condé Nast’s Glamour) and Lang had left the company with a $19 million severance. (Lang could not be reached for comment.)

Time Inc. had become an intractable management problem for Bewkes. One acute source of frustration was a failing online partnership between Sports Illustrated and Turner Sports, a shotgun attempt to challenge ESPN. Turner executives wanted to promote leagues whose broadcast rights they owned, which angered S.I. editors. At one point, a Turner executive told S.I. not to publish photographs on the site of NBA players wearing jewelry because the league did not like it. �You’re done, we’re going to take you over,� a Turner executive told S.I. editors in one meeting. In 2012, Bewkes dispatched his communications chief, Gary Ginsberg, to mediate. But the relationship had become too toxic to salvage, and Bewkes had by this time already settled on spinning off Time Inc.

Last fall, Ripp arrived at a company in total chaos. At first he treaded lightly. �You’d have to be really arrogant to walk in the door after a 14-year absence and say you know everything about the industry,� he says. �I’m not that stupid.� His first major move was an old-media deal: He finalized the acquisition of American Express Publishing, whose titles include Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, and Departures. But Ripp soon set about recruiting a team who would help him navigate the digital terrain.

On a recent morning, I visit Colin Bodell, an Amazon executive who joined Time Inc. as chief technology officer. With his trimmed goatee and black T-shirt, Bodell looks like a Silicon Valley coder and says things like �I don’t care if it’s the janitor who comes up with the next big idea.� He recently held a �hack day� with Time Inc. engineers, and he’s building a �rapid application development lab� to roll out new content products. �We know we have to iterate very, very fast,� he says. He’s overseen website relaunches that feature cleaner navigation and streamlined publishing tools. His biggest bet so far has been an application called OneBot that allows editors to track where their content is trending online.

Entrepreneurial talk, like �failing fast� and �rapid ideation,� peppers lots of conversations at Time Inc. these days. �I feel we’re a start-up in a lot of ways,� says Paul Fichtenbaum, the current editor of the sports group, where Sports Illustrated’s digital growth is outpacing its decline in print. In May, Time Inc. unveiled the online video series �I <3 My Closet� and �Eyesore,� a home-makeover show with SNL alum Rachel Dratch. In June, it acquired Cozi, an online scheduling application for families. In the coming months, M. Scott Havens says the company will look to launch digital products for technology enthusiasts, teens, brides, and baby-boomers. �We have to invest in the future and break free from the chains of being a magazine company,� he says. Time Inc. has recruited Brian Lew, a mergers-and-acquisitions executive from Time Warner, to hunt for digital deals.

Will all of this be enough? Recently announced second-quarter results show print-ad revenues having declined by another 6 percent and newsstand revenue down 13 percent. Digital-ad revenues jumped 12 percent, to $74 million, but the dollars are minuscule for a company that generates $3.4 billion in total revenue and reportedly could pay up to $50 million in annual debt service. Even if all of Time Inc.’s strategies in video, apps, and conferences take hold, it’s hard to imagine they’ll generate the profits its shareholders expect. Meanwhile, the rumor mill churns: Is Ripp planning to sell off the Alabama-based Southern Progress titles? Will Entertainment Weekly move entirely online? Even Pearlstine was taken aback by the state of the business when he returned. �I called up John Huey and said, �Jesus, it was fine when I left,’ � Pearlstine tells me.

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• Archive: “Features”
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