The March of Time
By John Huey/Editor-in-Chief
The position of Managing Editor at TIME isn't just a great job, or a fun job, or a really tough job. It's all those things, but most important, it is a public trust. No one has guarded that trust more fiercely than Jim Kelly, who assumed command of the magazine in January 2001 and has steered it with unerring judgment ever since.
Readers of TIME were fortunate that Jim was at the helm in September 2001, when those of us in New York City and Washington watched the world change before our eyes and the rest of civilization suddenly found itself looking to trusted journalists like those at TIME not just for information but also for understanding, guidance--even comfort. Jim's TIME provided all that and more. His love of the visual image came through week after week with lavish spreads of TIME's powerful and often moving photography. In many cases, the pictures he ran were worth way more than 1,000 words; in at least one case--that of a war-wounded child--the photography actually saved a life. The magazine won four National Magazine Awards under Jima record for a TIME managing editor--as well as its first Emmy, for our collaboration with ABC News on its 2003 series Iraq: Where Things Stand.
Jim ran TIME as a rabid nonpartisan. For all those outraged by his Dixie Chicks cover story, just as many were appalled to see Ann Coulter staring back at them from the iconic red-bordered space reserved for the most powerful or intriguing or perplexing among us.
I am happy to say that the same judgment, gravitas and good cheer that served TIME's readers so well for so many years will soon be serving all Time Inc.'s millions of readers of our 149 magazines around the world. In a couple of weeks, Jim will be promoted to the newly created position of managing editor, Time Inc., a perch from which he will have many new responsibilities. Chief among them: ensuring that all Time Inc.'s 3,000 journalists are fully versed in the highest standards, practices and ethics of our craft and that they abide by them.
I'm excited to introduce to you the new managing editor of TIME, Richard Stengel, who most recently was president and CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, another nonpartisan institution, devoted to educating Americans about the history and importance of the Constitution.
No stranger to TIME, Rick has worked here on three different occasions, as a writer and in several different top editing positions. His resume is rich and varied. A 1977 magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University, where he played on the 1975 NIT-winning basketball team under legendary coach Pete Carril, he went on to study at Christ Church College, Oxford, as a Rhodes scholar. He has authored best-selling books and produced an Oscar-nominated documentary.
More important, Rick has a deep respect for TIME's history as well as a clear-eyed view of what TIME must do to remain as relevant in the 21st century as it was in the 20th. That vision includes not just the magazine you hold in your hand, of course, but also the evolution of the already content-rich TIME.com website into an essential information destination on the Web. Rick, I can promise you, will be a reader's editor.
His first moment of approbation in his new job came when he walked into a room full of TIME editors and writers, all anxiously awaiting the news of who their next leader would be. Someone yelled, "It's Rick Stengel!" And the room burst into a round of loud, sustained applause, while Jim Kelly beamed at them all. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
John Huey, Editor-in-Chief