Time Inc. was a pioneer at the dawn of the Internet
revolution, creating in the '90s the prescient if ultimately ill-fated online
portal Pathfinder to host its magazines. But today, it isn't even keeping pace
with its smaller print brethren, and one area in which it has particularly
lagged is paid content.
While other major magazine publishers as well as newspapers have
made advances reversing what the Internet has wrought and getting consumers to
pay for digital content, Time Inc. still lags. In the spring of 2011, the
company's biggest rivals, Condé Nast and Hearst, made deals to sell
subscriptions to their magazines' tablet editions in Apple’s iTunes store. It
took Time Inc. more than a year to follow
suit.
