An Open Letter to Time Inc.
Dear Time Inc.,
Hi. It's been a while. Five months, in fact, since I stepped down as a senior editor with Fortune to join Axios. There were no hard feelings, just a chance for me to get in on the ground floor at a promising media startup. We wished each other well.
But the thing about leaving a job is that you often leave friends behind. And those friends, because they're still drawing paychecks, might not feel comfortable telling you the truth. So, if you'll please excuse my impertinence: You're being greedy.
Yeah, this is about your decision to guarantee senior executive bonuses in case the company gets bought, which is a distinct possibility since first round bids are due next week. You first disclosed the new compensation structure in a February regulatory filing, but it got scant attention before Daniel Roberts (a former Fortune colleague) dove in yesterday for Yahoo Finance.
The new plan basically guarantees bonuses and extends severance to top executives if they get fired after a change of control. Not to editors of the company's nearly two dozen titles, nor to any of their reporters, researchers or assistants. Also out of luck are salespeople, designers, technologists, back-office administrators, security guards or anyone else who spends most of their waking hours in the service of Time Inc.
Here was your explanation for this dichotomy:
"The Plan is intended to maximize stockholder value by providing certain financial assurances to key management employees who are most likely to be impacted by a change in control so that they can continue to exercise their judgment and legal responsibilities without the potential for distraction and bias that can arise from concerns regarding their personal circumstances."
Given that you haven't yet received bids, there is no reason for you to believe that "key management employees" are more likely than the rank-and-file to be impacted by a change in control. For example, it's entirely possible that a bidder might want to shutter most of the company's print products, which would eliminate the need for positions well below the C-suite. Are you saying such people aren't distracted by the takeover talk, or just that they aren't terribly important? If the former, you're wrong (again, I've still got friends there). If it's the latter, then you've been breaching your fiduciary duty to shareholders by keeping such people on the payroll.
Perhaps I'm just a cock-eyed capitalist, but shouldn't top executives need to prove their worth just like those with smaller paychecks? If a new owner decides that someone VP or above isn't pulling their weight, then that's how the cookie crumbles. They'd hardly be the first people to lose their jobs at Time Inc. in 2017. Moreover, it seems that such a backstop actually provides less incentive for top execs to improve the company, which prospective buyers would realize (thus reducing current shareholder value).
The good news in all this is that it isn't too late. It's just as easy to rescind this new compensation structure as it was to introduce it. Sure you'll have to spend a bit on SEC filing fees, but that's a pittance compared to the long-term cost of doing wrong by your employees.
Remember how unfair it felt when Time Warner spun you off, loaded you with debt and even forced you to keep paying a fired CEO? It's now TIME for you to break the pattern.
Sincerely,
Dan Primack
Non-Profit & Business Executive
7 年Well said: Here's my beef with Time as of today: Time Magazine’s recent issue has an unshaven Harvey Weinstein scowling into the camera, with the word “predator” in all caps below. If one had been fast asleep for the last twenty years, one might applaud Time for speaking truth to power, for taking its position as a major national news outlet seriously enough to condemn men who abuse women and live behind a wall of complicit boot-lickers. Alas, Time should be taken out behind the barn and given twenty lashes. Time should have their journalistic credentials revoked, just as Weinstein has had some of his Hollywood privileges rescinded. Time is as much an enabler – indeed more so given its broad influence – than the sycophants on Weinstein’s payroll who are scrambling to the shadows. Time has been covering Hollywood and Weinstein for more than three decades. Time executives have eaten private dinners with Weinstein, attended snazzy gala evenings with Weinstein and otherwise been willing - indeed delighted - participants in the elite swirl of money and fame in which Weinstein and his ilk live. Journalists, it should be recalled, are ostensibly in business to ignore the press releases and pixie dust designed to mislead them and instead dig into the facts to discover what is really happening. But, Time’s team of Ivy-leaguers and status quo supporters aren’t particularly interested in pissing off guys like Weinstein, men who can provide entrees to the after-parties on Oscar night, who can give their kids summer jobs or get them seated next to some starlet. Weinstein’s predatory – seemingly criminal – conduct wasn’t exactly hidden under twelve layers of off-shore corporate shells or deep in a vault, buried in concrete 1,000 feet under Mt. Rushmore. One only needed to have a passing familiarity with Hollywood to know that Weinstein was a pig’s pig, a sad sack of a human being for whom it would be easy to feel sorry were he not such a violent, destructive and mean-spirited fellow. Time would be well-served to bring in a team of real journalists and pay them to do the story worth writing – how it is that dozens and dozens of well-paid, highly-educated men and women ignored the first rule of journalism for thirty years and instead played an important role in providing Weinstein with the aura of invincibility that permitted his reign of terror.
Regional Advertising Manager
8 年As a former Time-Inc'er, this is spot on. Too many times (as with the Southern Progress division), the top becomes a little club that takes care of themselves.
Retired CMA, CFO, Executive Director
8 年I left in 2007. Excellent read.
v?n phòng at c?ng ty c? ph?n thi?t b? v?n phòng
8 年Máy in Fuji Xerox P265dw t?i AT Vi?t Nam https://atvietnam.over-blog.com/2017/03/may-in-fuji-xerox-p265dw-t-i-at-vi-t-nam.html
Experienced IT manager interested in leading a multicultural technical team to extraordinary results.
8 年"The Plan is intended to maximize stockholder value by providing certain financial assurances to key management employees who are most likely to be impacted by a change in control so that they can continue to exercise their judgment " Shouldn't Time be reducing their salaries ? Wasn't it their "judgement" that put Time in this situation ? The greed is insulting to all the "non titled" people who toil everyday and don't have the "financial assurances" to weather the impending storm.