Mary Chind/The Des Moines Register
Meredith, a magazine company, is headquartered in Des Moines.
When Jack Griffin, the former president of the magazine company Meredith, took the reins at Time Inc., he threw a holiday party for his staff on the 34th floor of the Time & Life Building. For many employees at the famously hierarchal company, their first visit to the rambling executive suites that inspired the sets of “Mad Men” became known as “The Miracle on 34th.”
Mr. Griffin lasted just six months at Time before he was asked to leave by Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of its parent company, Time Warner, who publicly rebuked Mr. Griffin, saying that his “leadership style and approach did not mesh with Time Inc. and Time Warner.”
As bankers and media executives hammer out the details of creating a new publicly traded company to house the magazine titles of the Meredith Corporation and the lifestyle titles of Time Inc., employees at both companies have been wondering how executives will take on the harder task of merging two very different corporate cultures.
Meredith’s headquarters in Des Moines have an open floor plan; the executives have their offices on the first floor and favor early-morning meetings. A recent lunch at one of Meredith’s magazines featured kale salad and rosemary-infused cucumber lemonade. Time executives tend toward lunches at Michael’s, where the dry-aged steak is a highlight, and after-work cocktails at the Lamb’s Club.
And then there are the postrecessionary approaches to travel: Meredith’s chief executive turned its corporate jets into shuttles with open seating, while Time still allows staff members to expense hotel rooms at the Four Seasons.
“It’s like the Yankees’ farm team taking over the Yankees,” according to a current Time Inc. executive who, like many who talked about the merger, declined to be identified while criticizing bosses or potential bosses.
The merger news appears to be more troubling to employees at the long revered Time Inc., whose lucrative titles like People and InStyle have been essentially sold off by Time Warner and are likely to be overseen by Meredith’s chief executive, Stephen M. Lacy. Time Inc. employees have made cracks about Des Moines and shared more sobering fears about the merger.
And unanswered questions swirl around the offices: Will Time Inc.’s Cooking Light and its fierce rival at Meredith, Eating Well, be expected to share intelligence? Can celebrity titles like People and InStyle flourish sharing a publisher with Wood magazine? And, most important of all, how many former Time Inc. executives might be moved to Iowa?
Press officers for both Time and Meredith declined to comment about any specific negotiations. But an earlier effort to blend Meredith’s folksy culture with the titans of Time failed quickly.
In August 2010, Mr. Griffin became the first chief executive to join Time Inc. from outside the company. His efforts to restructure some of the company’s entrenched hierarchy and infuse his management experiences from Meredith were largely rebuffed. While he garnered praise for the holiday party, staff members bristled when Mr. Griffin, a marathon runner, introduced 7:30 a.m. breakfast meetings — similar to the daily meetings he attended at Meredith, but a shock to the culture at Time Inc., where late nights on deadline are typical.
But this time, Time and Meredith are blending the titles that magazine industry executives say are more compatible. Time is holding onto the older titles that gave the company its gravitas, like Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated. The new company will include titles it created or purchased in recent decades, like the cash cows People and InStyle and smaller titles like Southern Living and This Old House.
Both companies also have major workforces beyond their home cities. Only 3,000 of Time Inc.’s nearly 8,000 employees are based in New York City, with offices in London and Birmingham, Ala. Meredith has its 1,000 magazine employees split evenly between its midtown offices on Third Avenue and its headquarters in Des Moines.
“If you take Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated from the mix, you have much greater similarity to the titles that are left than differences,” said Peter Kreisky, who worked as a senior adviser to Mr. Griffin at Time Inc. and who also has advised Meredith in the past.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 25, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the year Nancy Williamson left Time Inc. She retired in 1998, not 1989.
Time Inc. and Meredith Prepare to Join Magazine Businesses
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Time Inc. and Meredith Prepare to Join Magazine Businesses
