Thursday, February 08, 2007

DOWNSIZING: A 100-WORD BUSINESS TALE

For years, the magazine was Required Reading in almost every American home.

It became a national icon after adopting its new photojournalism format in 1936. Covering everything from the momentous to the mundane, its renowned photographers - Edward Steichen and Alfred Eisenstaedt among them - filled its pages with Pulitzer prize-winning pictures.

But now it was 1972, and the tastes of America had changed. Sales plummeted.

Henry Luce called his employees in to give them the bad news. He couldn’t afford to pay them.

How ironic, he thought. It simply took too much bread to maintain the staff of Life.

No comments: