It remains to be seen whether Time’s highly touted revolution within the past week – primarily issuing the magazine on Fridays instead of Monday and website relaunch today – will give Google News, Drudge or Digg a run for their money, which are the stated goals of the magazine’s executives as told to Ad Age. John Cantarella, who joined Time.com as general manager last July from a post at NYTimes.com, said the site’s strategy is meant to recall its original mission laid out in 1923: “We’re not necessarily all the news. We’re the most important news.” In an age where consumers value the ability to customize their content, especially when it comes to deciding “what the most important news,” a part from the cosmetic changes, Time seems to be standing still by relying on long opinion pieces by the likes of William Kristol, Walter Isaacson, Andrew Sullivan and Michael Kinsley. As David Carr suggested in his NYT piece, these names are not exactly the freshest voices out there.
Other shoes waiting to drop: the impending layoffs at Time’s sister publications and yet another Time Inc. re-org. The company is expected to shed 150 staff positions across most of its titles on or around January 17; Mediaweek reports that the magazines are being reorganized along six vertical content areas: news, celebrity/entertainment, sports, business/finance, home/food and health/fitness. Meanwhile, the flagship title’s digital side is likely to be shielded—Time.com, for one, has doubled its ad and editorial staff to 32 people since the summer.
Rafat adds: The newly redesigned looks very nice and clean, in some sense similar to the NYTimes.com homepage design.
Related: Time People Of The Year: All Of Us