Crunch Time at Time Inc.

NEW YORK - As the H.M.S. Havengore pulled away from London's Tower Wharf on the afternoon of Jan. 30, 1965, the construction cranes lining the banks of the Thames began dipping their necks in an eerie, synchronized bow. On board the Havengore was the casket of Sir Winston Churchill, which was now being transported privately to a family plot in Oxfordshire.

On the quay, a Life photographer, one of 17 assigned by the magazine to cover the procession, snapped his final shots of the mechanical salute and handed off a roll of color film to a young local on a motorbike, who set about zigzagging his way through the crowds. As Churchill's coffin continued its stately journey, the film - the last of 70 rolls - raced west, to a temporary Life office 10 miles outside the city.

The "office" was, in fact, a Seaboard World Airlines DC-8 outfitted with everything the magazine's staff would need - including a fully equipped darkroom - to assemble an issue in the course of the 4,000-mile flight to its Chicago printing facility. It was the only way to get the funeral package into the next issue, and Life's management considered no expense too great in the pursuit of important journalism (which was expressed in that peculiar prose known as "Timestyle," respectfully emulated above).

From a bean-counting perspective, it might have been more sound to run the Churchill coverage a week late. But Life wasn't run by bean counters. Life and its sister publications "existed to explain the world and make a nickel," says Ray Cave, former managing editor of Time, paraphrasing company founder Henry Luce. Cave adds that Luce was willing to "put the nickel second."

These days at Time Inc., many feel the nickel has been gaining ground fast. And now that the notoriously bottom-line-oriented America Online has taken over, some within the company worry that "explaining the world" will take an ever more distant second place.

While every corporation has a culture, few are as developed and well-documented as Time Inc.'s. And even with the most famous and lavish perks of the company's heyday long gone, after decades of cost cutting and corporate mergers, Time Inc. has remained one of the best-compensated, most-secure places to work in journalism. It is still occasionally described, tongue only half in cheek, as Paradise Publishing.

Beginning in earnest last week, however, Time Inc. has also become one of the best publishing companies from which to lose your job, as it phases in early retirement packages to its older, longer-standing employees. These are, in many cases, the last guardians of the company's storied culture. The combined company has already replaced Time's popular profit-sharing program with stock options - an obvious nod to AOL's cash-flow-conscious influence and an unwelcome shock to the company's older employees.