Still, Dykman had never in his tenure at Time undertaken a project of the scope Gibbs envisioned. He was enthusiastic about the idea but busy with the requirements of the weekly magazine. Managing Editor Kelly was also interested in the project, but saw no immediate opportunity to print it. “I think it was just a matter of the news getting in the way,” Kelly recalls. For one thing, it would have required the graphics department to take three to four weeks to concentrate only on that project. The Iraq war dominated the news in 2004, and when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005, Time devoted substantial resources to covering the aftermath. In short, Kelly could not spare the staff required to produce “American Mirror.” For another thing, Kelly says, “it was a good idea with no tremendous urgency behind it.” A story about America would always be timely. “It’s the nature of journalism,” adds Dykman, “that things that can wait, do wait.”

Meanwhile, Time was changing. Norman Pearlstine, who had for 10 years been the editor-in-chief of Time Inc.— Time magazine’s parent company, which published some 130 titles—retired in 2005, bequeathing the post and the oversight of Time Inc.’s magazines to John Huey. According to New York Magazine , Huey was eager to “blow up” Time . ^[4] To that end, one of his first tasks as the sixth editor-in-chief of Time Inc. was to give its flagship magazine new leadership. In June 2006, he replaced the managing editor, the publication’s top post. Instead of Kelly, Richard Stengel would run the magazine.

Stengel would have a mandate to adapt the newsweekly for a 21st century readership. As news consumers came increasingly to rely on the Web for breaking news, weekly news magazines struggled to stay relevant. They also struggled to stay economically solvent. Time ’s circulation, along with that of its main competitors, Newsweek and US News & World Report , was plummeting. Industry-wide newsstand sales had fallen by more than 4 percent in the first half of 2006. But Time had experienced by far the largest drop, losing 24 percent of its newsstand sales compared to the previous year. ^[5] Its staff, like that at Newsweek , had been shrinking steadily since the 1980s; between 2005 and 2006, Time’s staff decreased by about 38 people, or nearly 14 percent. ^[6] This was the magazine Stengel inherited. ^[7]

Magazine Circulation 1998-2006

Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations, annual audit reports & publisher’s statements, via Project for Excellence in Journalism. Circulation figures are averages for the second quarter annually.

Magazine Staff 1983-2006

Source: Project for Excellence in Journalism