Ripp shoots down that idea. �I would not come back to a company that would be bled and drained,� he tells me. �I didn’t want any part of that. This company defined my life.� Instead, he says he’s approaching his job as �a classic turnaround situation.� His model is his corporate hero, Lou Gerstner, the iconoclastic IBM chief who transformed a moribund mainframe manufacturer into a fast-growing technology-services company.

Pearlstine insists the search for new revenue models won’t chill Time Inc.’s journalism. �What doesn’t change is a commitment to editorial independence and editorial integrity,� he says. Dan Okrent, a longtime former Time Inc. editor who consulted for Nelson, sees it otherwise. �The world is filled with excellent publishing companies where editors work for the business side,� he says. �The problem is, if you have an 80-year tradition and then you change it, there has to be a reason. I can’t think of a reason that’s anything but a threat to editorial independence.�

In mid-August, when Gawker published an internal company spreadsheet ranking SI.com writers in part on how much content they produce that is �beneficial to advertiser relationship,� a chorus of prominent journalists erupted on Twitter. �Henry Luce must be spinning in his grave,� wrote the critic Paul Goldberger. Pearlstine tells me that he hadn’t been aware of the chart��Had it gone past me, I would have said, �What the fuck is this?’ ��but also that the criticism is overwrought. �It’s bullshit,� he says. “In a dot-com world, if you’re judging people on audience traffic, one of the qualities of those things is �Are you creating traffic for advertisers that you can monetize?’ That’s a legitimate question.�

Journalists at Time Inc. are on edge. �All of it confuses me,� says veteran Time columnist Joe Klein. �Everybody is worried, obviously.� A 25 percent cost-cutting target has been set across the company. In recent months, according to sources, there were discussions about converting Time to a biweekly. Time managing editor Nancy Gibbs protested and was able to delay a decision. �If you want to save money you can start with my salary,� she told executives. But she’s had to genuflect to the business side in other matters, scaling down foreign resources in particular.

Pearlstine’s central role in this shift has inspired considerable anger among former colleagues and left longtime relationships strained. In particular, John Huey, the garrulous Southerner whom Pearlstine picked to succeed him as editor-in-chief in 2005, was wounded by the ease with which Pearlstine swept aside Nelson, Huey’s handpicked successor. �There are some folks looking at Norm, who admire him as a journalist, wondering: Why would you want to go out in your last job as a man who gets paid to watch a cadaver put in the ground?� one former senior editor told me. Adds another: �It’s like watching Tommy Lee Jones doing those insurance commercials. It’s like, really? This is sad.�

Pearlstine has heard the criticism and is unfazed. �I love the debate,� he says. He has no trouble arguing he’s made the right decision about ending the church-state separation and says he still regularly reads and weighs in on sensitive stories. �In a fast-moving age for digital, for video, for new technologies, I thought it was really important there was close coordination between edit and the business side,� he says. �I mean, we’re not a cultural artifact at all. We are trying to serve the best interests of our stakeholders and our customers.�

In his long career in business journalism, Pearl�stine has frequently carved out room to practice journalism as a business. At The Wall Street Journal, which he joined in 1968, he wrote the business plan for The Wall Street Journal Europe. As managing editor of the Journal in the ’80s, he watched his reporters cover the boom in leveraged buyouts and in 1992 left to launch a fund of his own. It lasted just a year, until one of its investors, QVC chairman Barry Diller, made a hostile bid for Paramount, infuriating another investor, Paramount chief Martin Davis.

In 1995, Pearlstine became editor-in-chief of Time Inc. But he wanted a hand on the business wheel, too, and tried securing an office next to the CEO. Jason McManus, his predecessor, intervened. �You absolutely cannot do that,� McManus told Pearlstine. �I listened,� Pearlstine now says. �I look back on that and feel it was a mistake.�

Still, he managed to find operational responsibilities�Time Inc.’s international, television, and nascent internet divisions reported to him. In 2001, Pearlstine worked on the $1.6 billion acquisition of IPC. And shortly after he stepped down in 2005, he joined the media and telecom practice of the Carlyle Group, the politically well-�connected superfund. His arrival sparked speculation that he would help engineer a buyout of his former employer, but Pearl�stine tells me that he never looked at acquiring Time Inc. In fact, his timing was terrible. When he was first considering joining Carlyle, private equity was booming, and �it seemed like you could buy anything.� By the summer of 2007, the credit markets had seized, and Pearlstine soon left Carlyle without completing a single transaction.

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