NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Time Inc. (NYSE:TIME) announced today that TIME Editor-in-Chief Nancy Gibbs is stepping down after 32 years at the brand, including four years at its helm.
Gibbs will remain with the company until the end of 2017 as Editorial Director of Time Inc.’s News Group, a title she has held in addition to Editor-in-Chief of TIME since 2016. As Editorial Director, she advises on editorial matters and special projects for the TIME, FORTUNE, MONEY, TIME FOR KIDS and TIME HEALTH brands. Time Inc. expects to announce a successor soon.
“I’m grateful for every single day I’ve spent at TIME, but it’s time for another chapter,” said Gibbs. “I am so proud of what we have accomplished together, and I know that this brilliant, talented staff will take TIME to new heights. No one is more excited than I to see what they will do next.”
“Nancy successfully ushered TIME into a new era, meeting the demands of growing digital and mobile audiences, as well as introducing the brand to new audiences while building on its tradition of excellent journalism,” said Rich Battista, Time Inc. President & CEO. “She is one of the most outstanding journalists in the business, and her distinctive voice has helped to define TIME for more than three decades. She led coverage of so many major events—including four presidential elections—boldly and with integrity. She is leaving TIME in a strong position, with the biggest audience in its history and more innovations ahead.”
“For almost as long as I’ve been reading TIME, Nancy has defined its unique and powerful voice. Both as Editor-in-Chief and, before that, as writer nonpareil, Nancy has had a unique ability to tell the story of our nation—and our world—in a comprehensive, compelling and compassionate way,” said Time Inc. Chief Content Officer Alan Murray. “On top of that, she has been extraordinarily successful in guiding TIME’s transition to new platforms, building a digital audience that has reached more than 60 million visitors worldwide—nearly 40% of them millennials.”
Gibbs took on leadership of TIME in September 2013. Over the past four years, TIME’s relevance in print has grown as its digital audience expanded through a combination of award-winning journalism and photography and a higher volume of digital and video content. The brand’s overall audience has more than doubled and is now the biggest it has been in its history, with a total reach of 100 million across platforms. Working closely together, Gibbs and Edward Felsenthal, TIME Digital Editor and Group Digital Editor News & Lifestyle, established a 24/7 news operation, extended TIME’s total social reach to more than 50 million, increased video production tenfold and deepened and broadened areas of coverage across platforms. Gibbs established a new reporting structure to merge the print and digital newsrooms into one, and she enhanced collaboration between the brand's business and editorial sides, as well as with other Time Inc. titles. She is the first woman to lead TIME.
As Editor-in-Chief, Gibbs directed TIME’s coverage of the most recent US presidential election and the Trump presidency, which included newsmaking interviews with the candidates and with Donald Trump after he took office, as well as some of the most iconic covers of the print magazine in recent history. TIME won the American Society of Magazine Editors Cover of the Year award for 2016’s “Total Meltdown” cover. During her tenure at TIME, Gibbs has interviewed five US presidents: Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. She is the co-author, along with TIME’s Michael Duffy, of two best-selling presidential histories: The President’s Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity (2012) and The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (2007).
Gibbs also interviewed world leaders such as Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Narendra Modi, Shinzo Abe, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, as well as leading business and cultural figures, including Tim Cook, J.K. Rowling, and Sheryl Sandberg. She has written more cover stories for TIME than any other writer in its history (more than 175), and she won the National Magazine Award for her cover story of TIME’s black-bordered September 11, 2001, special issue.
As Editor-in-Chief, Gibbs also transformed TIME’s storytelling with ambitious reporting and special projects that extended across many platforms. Highlights include the yearlong video series A Year in Space, which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in 2016 and adapted into a series on PBS nominated for a 2017 News & Documentary Emmy; an interactive multimedia exploration of the 100 most influential photographs of all time; and just recently, FIRSTS, a multimedia project highlighting 46 women who broke barriers across fields. FIRSTS includes an interactive site, short films, interviews, portraits, a social media campaign and, later this month, a hardcover book.
Gibbs was a recipient of a 2016 Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications. The Newswomen’s Club of New York honored her in 2015 with the Front Page Award for Lifetime Achievement. Under her tenure TIME won several major photography awards, including a National Magazine Award for Feature Photography in 2015 and World Press Photo Awards in 2014 and 2015.
Launches under Gibbs’ tenure include Motto, which debuted in 2016 and features content aimed at millennial women; documentary filmmaking unit Red Border Films, which produced A Year in Space and other projects; and virtual reality enterprise LIFE VR. TIME extended major franchises including TIME 100 and Person of the Year. She renewed the brand’s commitment to health coverage in print and digitally, exploring topics such as immunotherapy, gene editing and pandemic threats. In the latest Magazine Media 360 brand audience report, TIME ranked No. 8 among all magazine brands for its total audience, and TIME’s print audience grew by more than 7% year over year (MRI Spring 2017). Time.com broke a worldwide traffic record in August with more than 60 million unique visitors to Time.com (MRI Fusion).
Gibbs came to TIME as a factchecker in 1985. She rose in the ranks to become a lead writer, essayist and writer before taking on senior management roles.
Gibbs was born and raised in New York City. She graduated from Yale summa cum laude, with honors in history, and has a degree in politics and philosophy from Oxford, where she was a Marshall scholar.
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