Meredith shuts off funds for Time Life Alumni Society
One of the early casualties of the Time takeover by Meredith is the Time Life Alumni Society.
The band of former employees has close to 2,000 active members and since its founding in 1977 had always received company funds and an office within the corporate headquarters, even when the company moved from Rockefeller Center to Liberty Street downtown.
Now that Meredith is racing to get the Time Inc. signage taken down, the new owners have shut off the club funds, closed the office, and the corporate ID passes don’t work, the Post reports.
The alumni members comprise some of the editorial titans in the storied history of the company — including Dick Stolley (who procured exclusively for Life magazine the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination and then went on to be the launch editor of People) and former editors-in-chief of all Time Inc. titles including Norm Pearlstine, John Huey and the very last EIC in the company’s history, Martha Nelson.
But one member said the hit list also included the rank-and-file who toiled in relative obscurity in what they believed was the best publishing house in America.
The group was so talent-rich that the guest speakers at their luncheons were usually drawn from the ranks of their top writers.