NEW YORK  - Time has a new candidate for its Person of the Year cover: The Benioffs. Marc Benioff, the co-CEO of Salesforce.com, and his wife Lynne are buying the magazine from Meredith for $190 million in cash. They join the likes of Jeff Bezos and other technology titans, who have swooped in to save struggling news outfits.

Time magazine was founded more than 90 years ago and the news weekly formed the backbone of the once mighty Time Inc media group. Rival Meredith bought the publisher for $2.8 billion earlier this year. The magazine industry, like newspapers before it, is under digital assault from Alphabet’s Google search engine and social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Meredith always planned to sell Time and its sister publications Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money. It doesn’t release financial information about individual titles, but Time is profitable, according to a source familiar with the magazine. The sale is recouping about 7 percent of what Meredith paid for the whole of Time Inc.

The math is, however, largely beside the point. The magazine, which the Benioffs are purchasing personally, will bring other benefits including cachet and influence. Amazon.com’s Bezos is the unofficial patron saint of newspapers because of his personal investment in the Washington Post. Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple legend Steve Jobs, similarly rescued the Atlantic, a title founded in 1857.

There’s some irony in tech fortunes being applied to rejuvenate news organizations often decimated by the same internet trends that helped make their saviors’ billions. Yet Bezos, for one, sees the worth of gumshoe news-gathering. It’s a mistake, he told an audience at the Economic Club in Washington, D.C. last week, for President Donald Trump or other officials to attack the media – they should instead welcome the scrutiny.

“The media is going to be fine,” Bezos added. That’s more likely to be true with wealthy benefactors lining up to buy publications. There are more beleaguered examples out there: for instance, Condé Nast is putting some titles up for sale, according to news reports. The Benioffs’ deal is just the latest evidence that old-school media brands appeal to even newish tech riches.

CONTEXT NEWS

- Meredith said on Sept. 16 it had agreed to sell Time magazine and related brands to Marc and Lynne Benioff for $190 million in cash. Marc Benioff is chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce.com. The Benioffs are purchasing Time personally and the transaction is unrelated to Salesforce.com.

- Meredith acquired Time Inc, the parent of Time, for $2.8 billion on Jan. 31. Meredith intends to sell Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money, the sister publications of Time.

(Editing by Richard Beales and Amanda Gomez)

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