Marc Benioff’s embrace of Trump has Time staffers freaking out

Early last month, as Time’s editorial leaders rushed to defend their choice of Donald Trump as “Person of the Year,” the president-elect appeared at the New York Stock Exchange alongside a grinning Jessica Sibley, the CEO of the magazine. 

Flanked by Trump’s relatives and incoming Vice President J.D. Vance, Sibley joined in chants of “USA! USA!” as the president-elect rang the opening bell. Later, in a speech delivered in front of a giant image of Trump’s magazine cover, Sibley said Time was “honored” to be there with him and thanked the magazine’s owners, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, for their support. Marc later posted a video of the moment on X, congratulating Trump for the recognition and writing that it marked “a time of great promise for our nation.”

Back at their soon-shuttered offices in Manhattan’s Salesforce Tower, Time staffers watched the spectacle with mounting horror. 

“The line that people above us give is that Person of the Year is not an award — it’s a marking of a moment,” said one employee. “But to have our CEO standing next to him, and Marc’s tweets about it — how could it not look like an honor?”

In recent months, Time staffers have grown increasingly unhappy about their owners’ public embrace of the incoming president and worried about its effects on the publication’s integrity. But these are only the latest in a growing list of concerns with Marc Benioff and his stewardship of the 101-year-old publication. Interviews with a dozen current and former staffers reveal a dramatic overhaul of the business over several years — one focused more on forging connections with powerful people by handing out “accolades,” and throwing events for corporate sponsors, than on breaking major news through original reporting or strengthening the newsroom. 

“When you’re inside, it’s pretty clear that … their subscription model is in complete shambles,” said a former Time reporter who left last year. “And one thing that is very clear is that it’s no longer a journalism outlet. It’s just sort of a glorified corporate brochure.”

Never was the internal grumbling more pronounced than after the Person of the Year ordeal, which saw Benioff rejoicing — and staffers recoiling. 

“It was this realization of [Benioff] using our branding to voice his opinions,” said a veteran staffer. “And nobody can do anything about it.”

When the Benioffs purchased Time in 2018, Marc promised to be a hands-off leader who would stay out of editorial decisions and make the magazine a “steward of trust.” Staffers were relieved: Benioff, widely seen as one of Silicon Valley’s more progressive billionaires, was a much better fit than the conservative Koch brothers, who’d helped finance Meredith Corp.’s acquisition of the company eight months earlier. In 2020, Benioff even swore off making political donations in order to preserve Time’s neutrality. 

But at the dawn of a second Trump presidency, Benioff — like so many other tech titans — seems to have decided that bending the knee to the former reality star is simply the cost of doing business. (Salesforce, with a current market cap of $332.9 billion, has quadrupled its software contracts with U.S. government agencies since the last Trump presidency.)

And unlike many of his fellow billionaires, Benioff has an easy way to win the president-elect’s good graces: through a magazine that Trump is so obsessed with, he once had a fake cover of himself made and hung at one of his golf courses.

Time staffers have been concerned about Benioff’s embrace of Trump since at least October, when the magazine published a lengthy profile of Vice President Kamala Harris. The story noted that Harris declined to sit for an interview, in contrast with President Joe Biden and Trump, who had both been interviewed by the magazine multiple times. 

Benioff — who donated to Harris’s previous presidential run in 2020 — seized on the line, firing off a storm of tweets about the vice president and creating a mock Time cover with that sentence as the headline. “We believe in transparency and publish each interview in full,” he posted. “Why isn’t the Vice President engaging with the public on the same level? #TrustMatters #TransparencyMatters #Leadership.” 

In November, he posted a second fake Time cover, this one featuring a pet squirrel named P’Nut who had become a MAGA-world icon. The day Trump won the election, Benioff tweeted a real Time cover featuring a photo taken at Trump’s victory speech and congratulated him on the “remarkable achievement.”

Reporters at Time were not happy. Numerous employees, who would only speak to The Standard anonymously so as not to harm their job prospects, said they were deeply concerned that casual observers would mistake all the fake covers — tweeted from the verified account of the magazine’s owner — for the real thing, and Benioff’s personal statements as the viewpoints of Time. 

“It’s not the owner’s place to be congratulating the incoming president — we’re supposed to be objective,” said one staffer, who said “almost everyone” in the newsroom was concerned by the tweets. “It impacts how people view our journalism. It makes it look like we’re taking a side.” 

Added another: “How are we as journalists supposed to do our jobs when that is the look he’s putting out there?” 

Current and former employees said the Person of the Year label has always been intended as recognition of someone’s impact on the world, not as an honor or prize. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Vladimir Putin have all been named Person of the Year in the past. But Benioff showered Trump with congratulations on X, writing that he “look[ed] forward to working together to drive American success and prosperity for all.” 

Later, he posted and deleted a meme juxtaposing Trump’s mug shot with Time’s Person of the Year cover. “How it started, how it’s going,” the meme read.

Rick Stengel, a former Time managing editor, was puzzled by the barrage of tweets. “I must have said a million times as editor that the person of the year is not an honor. It’s a recognition that some newsmaker had a profound influence on the culture, for better or for worse,” he said. “So all the congratulations that were out there — I would congratulate someone on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, not on winning Time Person of the Year.”

Current Time staffers were more than confused; they were furious — especially when Trump showed up at the stock exchange with Sibley.

“If Benioff wants to support Trump, that’s his business,” said one staffer. “But where it becomes problematic is when he is drawing Time’s name and image into that, and conflating our coverage with his political beliefs.” 

Staff members say they have brought their concerns to editorial leaders, including Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, in both meetings and private messages. But the response they heard was consistent: editorial leadership has no control over Benioff’s tweets. As one person involved in conversations on the subject recalled: “It was very much, ‘What do you expect our leaders to do? Our hands are tied.’”

Benioff, Sibley, and Jacobs did not respond to The Standard’s request for comment. A Time spokesperson provided a statement defending the magazine’s journalism but declined to comment on Benioff’s tweets or Time leaders’ response.

Current and former employees have also been frustrated by editorial changes in recent years, many of which they say top leadership attributed to the Benioffs’ desire to eke out a profit after years of losses. Editors at the magazine told a number of employees in recent years that Time was losing money and needed to reverse course. Four people said they were told that pressure came directly from Marc Benioff, who is rumored to be courting a sale of the company. CNBC reported in November that Benioff was in early talks with Greek media company Antenna Group, but the billionaire said last month there was “no deal on the table” to sell Time. 

In a statement to The Standard, a Time spokesperson said the company’s goal is to “provide trusted journalism and build a sustainable business.”

“For over 100 years, TIME’s journalism has been supported by advertising, and the interests of those commercial partners do not influence our editorial decisions or coverage,” the statement said. “We’re grateful to Marc and Lynne Benioff, who have been generous champions of TIME since becoming owners in 2018.”

When longtime CEO Edward Felsenthal stepped down in 2022, Benioff tapped Sibley, the former Forbes COO, whom staffers say brought a singular focus on getting the company out of the red. Sibley has said as much in public memos to staff, calling it their “shared priority” to be “cash flow positive” in 2025 and create “a sustainable way to continue our mission of producing and delivering trusted journalism.”

This mission meant cost-cutting: The publication enacted two rounds of layoffs last year, discharging more than 50 people, including more than 15% of the magazine’s unionized staff. Time leadership also announced late last year that the magazine would be vacating its offices at Salesforce Tower across from manicured Bryant Park in December in favor of something smaller and cheaper, according to an email reviewed by The Standard. 

There was also a shift in editorial priorities. In 2023, the publication moved a number of junior staffers to a new, quick-turn “news desk,” where they were given a monthly quota of stories to file and discouraged from pursuing original reporting. At least one reporter was fired in part for not meeting her quota, according to three former staffers. 

When employees complained about the change, they were told the decision was the result of pressure from on high. “What we were being told was that it was all coming from the top,” a former staffer said. “Benioff was putting a lot of pressure on the company as a whole to make money and make profit.” 

The publication also began heavily prioritizing “accolades,” or its annual lists of impactful people and companies. The magazine is well known for its “Time 100” list of the most influential people in the world, but has in recent years rolled out more franchises, including “Time 100 Climate” and “Time 100 AI.” At least two reporters were moved off their beats and onto the accolades team without warning, staffers said, and one wound up quitting in response.

Staffers said the hope is that those included on the lists will attend corresponding events hosted by Time, like the 2024 Earth Awards and 2024 Women of the Year Awards. These red-carpet galas are heavily funded by corporate sponsors, whose branding is displayed prominently and which often receive shoutouts from the stage and on social media. (Benioff’s Salesforce is a frequent sponsor.) Sibley told a New York media conference last month that the company has gone from seven such events a year to more than 30.

Sibley has boasted about the revenue from these corporate-sponsored lists and events, telling Digiday this summer — just days after the second round of layoffs — that she was expecting a “very strong second half” as a result of the company’s pivot to a B2B business model that emphasized “strategic partnerships” over traditional advertising. At the media conference, she said B2B advertising revenue was up 18% last year, with events making up 28% of the total.

Time staffers, however, complain that the lists were less an opportunity for impactful reporting and more a way to genuflect before corporate sponsors and powerful people. Sibley herself has described the lists as a way to offer “commercial partners” an “association with the high-profile people who feature on the lists.” 

Three former staffers recalled being troubled by events sponsored by the governments of Rwanda and United Arab Emirates, wondering whether such partnerships would prevent Time from reporting critically on the human rights abuses in those countries. The publication has since posted sponsored content in partnership with a Saudi real estate initiative launched by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

Another former employee recalled Time taking down a corporate-sponsored “Next Generation Leaders” social media post because the sponsor did not want to be associated with the honoree in question: a Palestinian poet. The publication later put the video back up without the sponsor’s branding. 

Concerns over the recent editorial changes and Benioff’s political antics have caused at least three employees to leave Time within the last year. The Time Union has met with management repeatedly about problems with editorial standards, but members say they’ve received little in the way of answers.

“I had the sense that they wanted to manage our complaints, not to address them,” said a former staffer who was present at some of these meetings. “It was a lot of, ‘We hear your concerns,’ but they didn’t really offer a way forward.’” 

This person added: “The thing we heard from management again and again was: ‘We have to get profitable. The Benioffs want us to get profitable.’”