By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 1, 2008
Otto Fuerbringer, 97, the commanding managing editor who guided Time magazine through the turbulence of the 1960s and who helped launch Money and People magazines a decade later, died July 28 at the Morningside retirement community in Fullerton, Calif. His son Jonathan Fuerbringer said the cause of death has not been determined.
Mr. Fuerbringer became managing editor of Time, the magazine's top editorial position, in 1960 and held the job for eight years. He was known in equal measure for his conservative political tastes, his imperious manner and his receptiveness to the fast-moving social trends of the era.
He had a stern, demanding editorial style that led Time staffers to call him the "Iron Chancellor" as he steered the magazine on a rightward course that reflected the views of the magazine's co-founder, Henry Luce. In its skepticism of the presidential candidacy of John F. Kennedy and in its initial support of the Vietnam War, Mr. Fuerbringer's Time magazine was something of the official voice of the conservative establishment.
"Fuerbringer was a striking figure, a man of presence, and he held power decisively and did not encourage dissent," David Halberstam wrote in his 1979 book about the nation's leading news outlets, "The Powers That Be."
"He was the most controversial man within Time magazine, immensely influential, perhaps the most influential conservative of his generation in journalism, but outside the magazine almost no one knew his name," Halberstam wrote.
In 1952, Mr. Fuerbringer wrote a critical cover article on Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson that was seen as crucial to the victory of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. The report sparked an internal rebellion at Time and made Mr. Fuerbringer unpopular with many of his co-workers.
As managing editor in 1960, Mr. Fuerbringer was set to be a political kingmaker again until he suffered an aneurysm midway through the campaign and temporarily stepped aside. When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Mr. Fuerbringer outraged many on his staff by not putting the president on the magazine's cover, choosing instead to run a portrait of his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.
After voicing strong initial support for the war in Vietnam, Mr. Fuerbringer slowly changed his mind and, in 1968, wrote that the war could not be won.
Beyond the realm of politics and warfare, he expanded Time's coverage of culture and social trends and introduced bold artwork to its covers. He commissioned works by well-known artists, and many of the original sculptures and paintings used for Time covers are now housed at the National Portrait Gallery.
A 1964 cover story on changing sexual mores broke all records for newsstand sales. In 1966, Mr. Fuerbringer published a controversial cover consisting entirely of red words on a black background: "Is God Dead?"
The article explored the various ways Americans viewed faith and theology in an increasingly secular age, but the magazine was denounced by socially conservative readers.
In 1965, Mr. Fuerbringer had planned to name the Beatles as Time's iconic "Men of the Year" until he was dissuaded by lower-level editors. The magazine instead named Gen. William C. Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, its man of the year.
Mr. Fuerbringer's son said his father always regretted the decision.
"He was very open to the cultural trends of the time and making sure Time magazine wrote about them," Jonathan Fuerbringer, a retired New York Times reporter, said by telephone.
Nonetheless, Mr. Fuerbringer found a successful formula during his eight years at the helm, as the magazine's circulation rose from 3 million to 5 million.
"Otto was Time magazine sprung to life," Halberstam wrote, "a living extension of the very magazine he edited."
Otto Fuerbringer was born into a family of Lutheran ministers and theologians in St. Louis on Sept. 10, 1910. He graduated from Harvard College, where he edited the Harvard Crimson, and worked for his hometown St. Louis Post-Dispatch before joining Time in 1942. As a national affairs writer, he penned Time's 1945 cover story about the Allied victory over the Nazis in World War II.
He was Time's second-highest ranking editor for nine years before assuming the top job, against the wishes of many of the magazine's reporters, in 1960.
Later, as chief of Time Inc.'s magazine-development group, Mr. Fuerbringer secured a lasting legacy by overseeing the development of Money magazine in 1972 and People magazine in 1974.
According to a 1991 article in Greenwich magazine, another executive casually suggested, "Why don't we start a magazine called People?" Mr. Fuerbringer then wrote the prospectus for a magazine that "believes that most people are interested in what other people do," which led to one of the most successful magazine launches in publishing history.
Mr. Fuerbringer moved to California from Connecticut in 1999 and wrote a memoir, "On Time," last year.
In addition to his son, of Civitella in Val di Chiana, Italy, survivors include his wife of 68 years, Winona Gunn Fuerbringer of Fullerton; three other children, Peter Fuerbringer of Costa Mesa, Calif., Alexis Selwood of Los Angeles and Juliana Fuerbringer of Burlingame, Calif.; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.