Richard B. Stolley is Senior Editorial Adviser of Time Inc. which with its affiliates publishes 130 magazines throughout the world, with a readership of more than 120 million. Time Inc. is a Time Warner Company.
Stolley was appointed to the job on February 1, 1993, upon his retirement as Editorial Director, the second highest editorial management position in the company. From June 1995 to March 1996, he also held a dual job as Executive Producer of Extra, a Time Warner daily syndicated television show.
He was the editor of three photographic histories: the best-selling LIFE: Our Century in Pictures, in October 1999, a companion volume, LIFE: Century of Change, America in Pictures in 1900-2000, in October 2000, and the best-selling LIFE: World War 2, in October 2001, all published by Little, Brown. In 2002, Stolley wrote the text for Sinatra: An Intimate Portrait of a Very Good Year, published by Stewart, Tabori and Chang.
Stolley has been a reporter, writer, bureau chief, senior editor and managing editor at Time Inc. since 1953. He worked for 19 years on the weekly Life magazine and rose to assistant managing editor. During his career there, he served as chief of four bureaus in the U.S. and Europe. Most memorable among the stories he covered was the death of President John F. Kennedy during which Stolley discovered and obtained for Life the famous Zapruder film of the assassination.
Stolley was the editor in charge of the final issue, “The Year in Pictures 1972,” after Life announced it was suspending publication in December of that year.
In 1973 Stolley became the founding managing editor of People, joining the magazine in its planning stages, and remained in that position for eight years. People began publication in March 1974 with a circulation of one million and became profitable after an unprecedented 18 months. Described as the most successful magazine in publishing history, People now has a weekly circulation of 3,600,000.
In 1982 Stolley moved over to the managing editorship of the monthly Life. During the next three years, Life won two National Magazine Awards, the first in 1983 for general excellence among magazines with a circulation of more than one million and the second in 1985 for photography.
In 1987-88 Stolley’s assignment was director of special projects with responsibility for coordinating creative ideas among the magazine, books and video divisions of Time Inc. He became Editorial Director on January 1, 1989.
In 1996, Stolley was named to the American Society of Magazine Editors newly inaugurated Hall of Fame, which cited his founding of People with these words: “In pioneering personality-driven journalism, he left an indelible mark on the entire magazine industry by creating a form and format that just about every other magazine editor has drawn from and adapted.”
In 1997, Stolley received the Henry Johnson Fisher Award for Lifetime Achievement in magazines, the most prestigious award the industry bestows, from the Magazine Publishers of America. Later that same year, he was among the first group of Northwestern University-educated journalists named by the Medill School of Journalism to its new Hall of Achievement.
Stolley has written articles for People, Life, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Money, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, New York, Columbia, Vanity Fair and The New York Times. He was the editor of the book PEOPLE Celebrates People: The Best of 20 Unforgettable Years, published in 1994, and again in 1996 in a revised edition. He also wrote the introductions to A Hollywood Farewell: The Death and Funeral of Marilyn Monroe, by Leigh A. Wiener, published in 1990, and to LIFE: Man in Space: An Illustrated History from Sputnik to Columbia, published in 2003, and the foreword to LIFE: Platinum Anniversary Collection, 70 Years of Extraordinary Photography..
He was born October 3, 1928 in Pekin, Illinois, and while in high school, he worked for two years as sports editor of the Pekin Daily Times. He served two years in the Navy after World War II aboard the light cruiser U.S.S. Dayton. In 1952 he received a bachelor’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and one year later, a master’s degree. During two summers while in college, he reported and wrote for the Peekskill, NY, Evening Star. After graduation, he worked briefly for the Chicago Sun-Times, then became a reporter for Life.
Stolley is past president of the Overseas Press Club and of the American Society of Magazine Editors, a member of the boards of the National Parkinson Foundation in Miami, FL, and the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, NM. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY, in 1975 an honorary Doctor of Laws by Villa Maria College in Erie, PA, and in 1994 the Alumni Medal from Northwestern University.
