Does Ann Moore Deserve a Lifetime Achievement Award?

Ann Moore? Really? I mean, really?

I don't get terribly hung up on awards, especially in the publishing industry—a particularly self-congratulatory group that doles out a disproportionate amount of them. (It’s not that I don’t love the magazine industry—I love baseball, and baseball gives out an absurd amount of awards, too.)

Still, today’s announcement by the Magazine Publishers of America that Ann Moore, the chairman and chief executive of Time Inc., will receive the Henry Johnson Fisher Award for lifetime achievement alongside Martha Stewart in January struck me as a wee bit premature.

After all, Moore is currently in the process of executing a dramatic, sweeping reorganization—one that includes a reported 600 layoffs at the mega-publisher. (And layoffs that appear to be trickling out of Time Inc.’s hallowed halls at a prodigiously slow drip.)

Moore’s 30-year career at Time Inc. notwithstanding, in her tenure as CEO—since 2002—she really hasn’t had a defining moment, at least, not yet. (In fact, one could argue, her defining moment is the financial crisis all publishers—and the world at large—are currently grappling with.)

If she can steer Time Inc. through the economic storm, well, she would deserve a lifetime achievement award and to be inducted into the Magazine Hall of Fame. Hell, she’d deserve to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Just not yet.

As for Stewart, I can admit I’ve had a what I consider a healthy crush on the diva of domesticity ever since I saw her gamely wash down a bacon double cheeseburger with a cold can of Budweiser on Late Night with Conan O’Brien a few years back.

My love was unfazed by the ImClone stock scandal and resulting five-month prison term; the post-penitentiary poncho actually made me fall for her more.

That Stewart was chosen to be in the Magazine Editors Hall of Fame, to me, is a no-brainer. She’s been in mine for a long time.

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By Dylan Stableford --

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a travesty

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 10:40.

Recognizing Ann Moore as she oversees the dismantling of Time Inc. makes me want to rethink my membershp in the MPA. I mean, is this just an excuse to have a dinner and raise money? Choosing Moore puts on display the "let them eat cake" mentality evident among Time Inc's most senior managers. How many presidents and general managers have they kept while cutting mid-level and front-line staff? Before they give Ann Moore this award, maybe the MPA can explain why THIS reorganization trumps the last four or five on her watch. Amazingly bad choice. I'm sorry this is anonymous, by the way - but people so crazy as to think this makes sense won't take kindly to the criticism.

re: a travesty

Submitted by Dylan Stableford on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 11:38.

No offense to Ann Moore's long career at Time Inc. (after all, when she started in 1978, I was just the tender age of 0) I happen to agree with you. There are plenty of people deserving of a lifetime achievement award in this business. She's not one of them. At least not yet.

pathetic

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 12:09.

It is shocking that she has been chosen. Since she got the top job at Time Inc. she has had countless failures. I agree with the comments above that this is just an excuse for a dinner and a way to raise money. The MPA should be ashamed of itself.

Ann Moore's Horrendous Tenure as a CEO

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 12:12.

Ann's legacy will be defined by constant layoffs, firings, reorgs and chnage of startegy/direction. Ann is not, and never was, a CEO. She has surrounded herself during her tenure with the wrong people(i.e.Nora MacNeff) and let the wrong people sway whatever judgement she had. Ann is a competent Group Publisher who had good ideas for launching new magazines. But a CEO, forget it. Her legacy will be the thousands of people she let go and whose lives and careers she ruined.

joke

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 16:32.

Ann's predecessor, Don Logan, deserves the award if he hasn't already received it. Ann promoted the wrong people (or right people if the only requirement is masterful kissing up) and let go the people who would keep Time Inc. strong. This award is an insult to those who truly deserve it.

Moores the pity

Submitted by happyhooker on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 21:00.

As a former Time Inc. editor I watched her humiliate and fire the most creative editors who happened to have a spine (not a desirable trait under the divine Ms. M) while promoting the mentally incompetent (literally) who turned successful magazines into catalog copy. Good ideas for launching new magazines? Let's just say she stole from the best but I guess there's genius to that. All the magazines legends are dead anyways, and now, rolling in their graves

Ann Moore

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 12/02/2008 - 18:16.

Ann Moore is just one more executive who is in the dream world of digital wonder land.Never took the time to talk to or think like the readers and advertisers of the print products.Wall Street was her master not the reader or the advertiser.Successful publishing comes from thinking like the customer.

Ann Moore

Submitted by Ted Byrne on Wed, 12/03/2008 - 09:33.

There are reports out of China that laid off workers are rioting, burning offices, overturning cars, and beating executives of their former employers. They are railing at God by abusing his messengers. Ann Moore has the toughest job of any Time Inc. CEO in eighty years. And the laid off workers are blaming her for trying to float the unfloatable parts of a ship that are already well underwater. Moore's actions are a symptom, learned journalists should, more than recently rural immigrants to China's cities, be able to recognize that. Unless their considerably expensive educations layered no more than a patina of civilized veneer over the economic illiteracy of the creatures within. She is not the one to blame for journalists losing their markets. Odd how even the weakest competition from free sources has wiped away the product differentiation which journalists thought protected them... In fact what has been cracked is a monopoly shell... and what's needed is true value-added to re-create a market for laid off journalists. If there is such a thing. Good luck Ann.

Laughable, not because of layoffs, because of incompetence

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 12/03/2008 - 15:42.

Take a survey of current (never mind former) Time Inc. employees if she deserved a contract extension never mind an achievement award. There was a discernable "damn!" when it was released her wretched run wasn't over. Was she a smart executive running the People franchise, no question. She has been nothing but a major failure as Don Logan's replacement and is loathed to loved 10 to 1 in her own halls...and that's being generous...but since when has the MPA had any credibility anyway?

Time Inc. CEO’s induction begs the question: Too soon?

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