Smoke, Mirrors, and Time Magazine Covers

Like so many legacy publications, Time Magazine — where I worked for more than 25 years — is struggling to survive in the digital age. As readers and advertisers move inexorably online, Time issues have grown thinner, less frequent (the “weekly newsmagazine” now comes out every two weeks), less newsy and relevant. Yet, in at least one respect, Time can still have surprising impact.

The latest example came a couple of weeks ago, when the magazine released a cover image of Elon Musk sitting at the resolute desk in the Oval Office — a not-so-subtle suggestion that the cost-cutting tech billionaire is effectively running the show, not the President who appointed him, Donald Trump.  

This sparked a torrent of speculation: Has Musk overstepped his authority?  Is he drawing too much attention away from the notoriously thin-skinned Trump? Is a rift brewing between the two headstrong billionaires? It was testament to the power of a Time cover to crystallize issues, drive the conversation, maybe even influence events. 

There was only one problem: the image of Musk sitting at the President’s desk was not the cover of Time that week. 

At least, not on the magazine that subscribers like me got in the mail a few days later (which showed, instead, a quartet of cancer patients, illustrating a story about the surprising rise in cancer cases among young adults).  Nor is it the cover of record on the magazine’s website — which features yet another image: actor Colman Domingo, one of the “25 Black Leaders Working to End Inequality.” 

So which was the “real” cover of Time that week? Your guess is as good as mine.

I’ve had my complaints about the direction Time has taken in the years since I left. But one thing I give the magazine credit for is maintaining the strength of its brand. Franchises like Person of the Year and the annual Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people still generate a surprising amount of attention and coverage. And making the cover of Time still matters.  Donald Trump brags about how many times he has been there. For celebrities and political figures, it remains an enduring mark of achievement and recognition.   

Which is why it’s disturbing that the magazine has been playing so fast and loose with its most important franchise. The trouble started several years ago, when the magazine gained the ability to print multiple covers for a single issue: five different personalities from the Time 100 list, for instance. Now almost every week the magazine mocks up two or three different covers: some actually wind up on the print magazine; some just reside online. 

I first noticed this with the issue that followed the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. The magazine that arrived in my mailbox a couple of days later featured, not the riot, but a pair of benign medical researchers on the cover, for a story about the quest for a Covid vaccine. 

Unfortunate but understandable: the riot happened on the magazine’s closing day, and it was apparently too late (or too expensive) for a last-minute cover switch. The problem is that when I checked the magazine online — voila! —a digital do-over. The cover now featured a shot of the violence inside the House chamber, with the headline “Democracy Under Attack.” That remains the cover of record in the magazine’s archives — never mind that it was never (so far as I can tell) on the cover of anything.

It may seem terribly last century to worry about the integrity of an old-fashioned concept like the cover of a magazine that almost nobody reads in print anymore. But in an era of “fake news,” digitally manipulated images, and the confusions being wrought by AI, it’s a dangerous game.

The point of a Time cover is not that the magazine can create a striking image. It’s that the editors chose that particular image, among many possibilities, as the best way of summarizing the news of the week. But with multiple “alternate” covers, that choice is rendered meaningless. People made fun of Donald Trump, during his first presidential campaign, for creating a fake cover of himself on Time. But who’s to complain, when the magazine itself can gin up its own fake covers virtually at will, distribute them to the media, and enjoy the publicity bump, confident that no one will actually pick up the magazine and discover that it’s all smoke and mirrors? 

As Trump might say … sad.