• New York Observer, Thursday, May 11, 2006 11 AM

The New York Observer's Tom Scocca, using the occasion of Time's flashy "Time 100" issue to call the venerable magazine to task, begins by saying, "This is, by consensus, the time to be violently shaking up magazines. The Web has arrived; the readers are leaving; the industry’s grip on the pinnacle of the words-and-pictures trade is getting sweatier and slipperier."   Having established that as background, Scocca goes on to say that Time, although lovingly nurtured by Time Inc., is totally missing the boat.  While The Atlantic and The New Yorker, among others, regularly deliver intelligent investigative reporting and commentary, Time is squandering its reportorial resources, which are considerable. So says Scocca, anyway.  Yes, the magazine is an icon; yes, it's well-designed and carries the bylines of some top journalists.  Yes, it has the resources to occasionally knock a special-topic issue out of the park.  But it's created too much by committee, and, observes Scocca, it's simply "lifeless" in its current incarnation.

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