Wednesday, June 20, 2007

No online slackers allowed, says Time editor

Time magazine is turning up the heat under its writers and columnists to contribute to Time.com as well as the print magazine. The website was re-launched 4 months ago and while editor Richard Stengel says the results have been good, they're not good enough. According to an item carried in Gawker, he sent a memo to all staff that said,in effect,the future of their jobs depended upon it.
As good as TIME.com is, it still needs to be better. And it still needs more content, much more. A number of our best journalists are writing stories and covering their beats for TIME.com and the magazine simultaneously, and it gives me pleasure to single some of them out by name: Joe Klein, Jim Poniewozik, Karen Tumulty, Simon Elegant, Richard Corliss, Alex Perry, Bryan Walsh, Sean Gregory, Bobby Ghosh, Massimo Calabresi, Tim McGirk and Bruce Crumley. As you can see, this list includes many of our best traditional magazine journalists, and that's no accident; if you cover a beat or territory with passion and expertise, you can and should cover it any medium.

That list needs to grow. I sent out a memo last week about evaluations. Let me make this explicit: evaluations of every Time writer, correspondent, and reporter will be based on the quality and quantity of the contributions each of you makes to both the magazine and to TIME.com. TIME.com is a daily responsibility; Time magazine is a weekly responsibility. Time is made up of both.

I suspect that some of you regard writing for TIME.com as an obligation, and not what you came to Time to do. But times have changed, and we have to change with them. If you care about what you do - and I know you do - then you need to display your talent, your expertise, and your dedication online as well as in the magazine.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Translation: We'd really like you to work twice as hard for the same amount of pay.

12:38 pm  

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