COPY EDITOR WANTED

Oops: Time Inc. Probably Just Made a Six-Figure Mistake

A grammatical error in the Wall Street Journal cost the publisher a pretty penny.
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A scan of the TIME ad from the Wall Street Journal.

The publishers over at Time Inc. had a bright idea. They would create a new site, Motto, aimed at attracting young women with stories like “Ivanka Trump’s 9 Rules for How to Negotiate—and Win” and “Body-Positive Activist Ashley Graham Just Launched Her Own Line of Swimsuits.” And they would put an advertisement for this online, campy, female-driven advice hub in the print edition of Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal—something most millennial women reading about “What Mindfulness Really Means” surely include in their daily media diet.

Remarkably, this was not Time Inc.’s biggest misfire. The full-page ad, which features a woman positively beaming at something she is reading on her phone, reads: “Don’t miss the newest venture by the editor’s of Time.” Those editors, it seems, need editors of their own.

Perhaps the fact that an errant apostrophe made its way past them and the likely dozens of people who had to O.K. the ad before publication has something to do with Time Inc.’s financial troubles. The nation’s largest magazine publisher deepened its losses in the latest quarter, as print ad sales continued their descent amid a costly investment in digital. In addition to Motto, the company has been experimenting with other new ventures, such as a collaboration with Kobe Bryant, entitled “Dear Basketball,” to be distributed on Sports Illustrated digital properties. Hiring a copy editor to glance over what was likely a six-figure ad buy might not be a terrible investment.