After 70 years of print - amongst the rival publications Newsweek, Businessweek, & Time - Time is the only of the three to have seemingly remained intact. Maybe the medium isn't dead?

I love what Time's managing editor said, "I'm a big believer that nothing ever actually goes away. People still make pottery, write epic poetry. Beautiful print magazines will always exist. But you'll have a lot of different options to get Time's content."

Even so, print is a dying breed. And yet somehow Time managed to post $40 mil in profits last year.

How did they manage to pull this off?

According to another of their editors, its the discpline of saying "No",

"The discipline has always been, not what do you cover, but what do you not cover. It has always been an exercise in ignoring things…in saying that's not important enough, or that's not interesting enough, or that's not surprising enough."

And they go further than just saying "No". They've also defined how to determine when to say "Yes",

"We convert information into knowledge. Knowledge is what people want. Information is the commodity."

Discipline plus distinction is a hard combo to beat.

Business is changing…constantly. So how – like Time – do you move at the speed of business while keeping a focus that keeps you not just alive & relevant, but growing?

Figuring out the yesses & noes isn't easy.

For more, check out the story at NPR.

Back to Blog