James R. Shepley, 71; Former Time Inc. Writer, Executive
James Robinson Shepley, a journalist and businessman who as president of Time Inc. from 1969 to 1980 was credited with leading his firm into expanded publishing interests and new video enterprises, died of cancer Wednesday in Houston. He was 71 and had lived in Hartfield, Va., after retiring.
Shepley joined Time magazine’s Washington bureau in 1942 and became a war correspondent in World War II, when he was credited with coining the name “Merrill’s Marauders” for the famed combat unit of the Pacific. At war’s end he was on the staff of Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.
After taking a leave to work in the 1960 presidential campaign as a member of Vice President Richard M. Nixon’s brain trust, he returned to Time and moved to the business side of publishing.
He became assistant publisher of Life magazine, publisher of Fortune, then of Time before being chosen president of Time Inc. in 1969.
During his tenure, the company launched Money magazine in 1972 and People in 1974; revived Life as a monthly in 1978, bought Book-of-the-Month Club and American Television and Communications Corp. in 1977 and developed Home Box Office as the first national pay TV service in the mid-1970s.
In 1956, Shepley interviewed John Foster Dulles for an article in Life in which the secretary of state told him that the United States three times had walked to the “brink” of war “and looked it in the face.” Dulles’ remarks made news and introduced “brinkmanship” into the Cold War lexicon.
After stepping down as president in 1980, Shepley stayed on the Time Inc. board as chairman of its executive committee and also was chairman and chief executive officer of the Washington Star, which Time Inc. owned for three years.
