Having a good TIME!

(Lori King photos from top: 1. Exterior of TIME and LIFE. 2. TIME editorial  board meeting. 3. Archived famous iconic images and camera of LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.  4. Working closet of InStyle Magazine.)

If you like news, there's TIME. If you love sports, there's Sports Illustrated. Fashion? Read InStyle.  

These were the three TIME-LIFE Inc. magazines we toured   May 27, and they were good examples of the diversity of  journalism. 

  I really appreciate the effort put forth by professors Ann and Carl to offer a little something for everyone this week. They tried hard to try please a dozen students who not only range in age, but interests. The common denominator is our  mutual love for journalism and storytelling.

  The students here for the KSU media seminar are a mixed bag of majors. We are reporters, photographers and videographers. We are undergrads and grads. Some are treating cameras as extensions of themselves, and others hardly use one. Many of the students have yet to begin their first job, while a few of us are ready to share our extensive experience in the classroom, teaching our possible replacements.

  The highlight of this day was witnessing TIME’s editorial meeting, lead by executive editor Nancy Gibbs, the most published front cover reporter in the history of this 87-year-old national news magazine. In that one conference room were all of the TIME photo, web and news directors, and I couldn’t help but feel like a star-struck tourist.

  The big news of the day for all three magazines, as well as the AP and New York Times, is the conversion of their content to the iPAD. All of our guest speakers agreed that the iPAD is a game changer, and web designers were busy working on the apps so readers could play the game.

Gibbs described the age of electronic mobility this way: “TIME will have the same bloodline, but different metabolism.”

I've heard nothing but positive comments about the iPAD, despite the tremendous added workload on the staff. So, I think I know what I want for Christmas.

Now, please excuse me while I read my old-fashioned hard copy of TIME.

(In future blogs I will include more comments from various editors on the topics of electronic media, the power of advertising, the slow death of newspapers, etc.)