Time Revamps Magazine to Expand Entertainment Coverage

Also, some content found only on iPad and online will migrate to print edition

Time magazine is expected to announce on Wednesday a revamp within in the pages of its magazine in an effort to, among other things, expand its coverage of arts and entertainment culture, and showcase stuff that works well for Time online and on mobile devices, like the iPad.

Executives at Time refused to call the changes, which will debut in this weeks issue, a “redesign.”

Whatever it’s called, the reason the magazine is doing it is partly a result of the print industry’s sea change from a print-first mentality to a "How can we get that cool thing on our website into the magazine?" one.

“We have been finding that some of the things we do well online or on the iPad, we didn’t have room for in the magazine,” Time executive editor Nancy Gibbs told TheWrap on the eve of the announcement. “We wanted to make room for them in the magazine.”

And while Time’s online audience (10.4 million unique visitors per month in the U.S., according to Quancast estimates) is now roughly three times its print circulation, there’s not a lot of overlap, Gibbs said. “We wanted to make sure the things we’re doing more creatively online can migrate to the magazine for our print readers.”

Some of those things include oversized photography (on a new front-of-book page called “Closeup”), graphically-driven pieces (many in the retooled "Briefing" section) and a new section, called "The Culture," that will combine its life and arts sections and include a righthand opening page for the section that acts as a mini cover. (First up: a profile “King’s Speech” star and Academy Award favorite Colin Firth.)

“We found that after the feature well, the magazine kind of collapsed,” Gibbs said. The expanded "Culture" section is an effort to clearly organize the back of the magazine for readers, she said, without confining entertainment coverage in “straight jacketed” sections.

Television critic James Poniewozik's "Tuned In" column gets prominent billing, and "10 Questions," Time's Q+A with a newsmaker, now occupies the back page.

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