In another example of tech money meets journalism, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, are buying Time Magazine.
The Benioffs, who are paying $190 million in cash for the world-renowned publication, will not be involved in running it, Time Editor Edward Felsenthal told his staff Sunday.
“The Benioffs will hold Time as a family investment,” he said. “It will have no connection to Salesforce, the software company Marc founded in 1999. While they will not be operators of the business, we are extremely fortunate to have Marc and Lynne’s guidance and mentorship as we set out to build a new company.”
“The power of Time has always been in its unique storytelling of the people & issues that affect us all & connect us all,” Benioff tweeted Sunday. “A treasure trove of our history & culture. We have deep respect for their organization & honored to be stewards of this iconic brand.”
In buying Time, the Benioffs are the latest people from the tech world to invest in print journalism as it has had to adjust to the rise of the internet and the outsize impact of the very technology some of its now-benefactors helped popularize. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013. Laurene Powell Jobs, who has other media investments, bought a majority stake in the Atlantic magazine last year. And Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes bought the New Republic in 2012, but sold it after four years.
The influence of New York-based weekly news magazine Time, founded in 1923, is long-running. It publishes an annual list of the world’s most influential people, and anoints companies, inventions and places as the world’s greatest. However, like many print publications in the age of online advertising, its business has struggled: In the first half of the year, its print circulation fell to 2.3 million, down from 3 million in the year-ago period, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. Those figures were cited by the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report the deal.
Meredith Corp., which also is trying to sell publications such as Fortune and Sports Illustrated, had owned Time since November. The Benioffs were among many Time suitors who ended up being the best fit because “they’re not looking for private-equity returns,” Alan Murray, chief content officer of the Time brands at Meredith, told the New York Times.
Benioff, a former Oracle executive who co-founded cloud software provider Salesforce in 1999, has a net worth of $4.9 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time wealth tracker. He and his wife are philanthropists who have focused on education and health care, including through the University of California, San Francisco’s UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.
The deal is expected to close within 30 days, Meredith said in its press release Sunday.
