Center’s Chief Takes Time Post: Richard Stengel Has Led the Constitution Center for Two Years. He Will Be the Magazine’s Managing Editor

By Larry Eichel, The Philadelphia Inquirer

May 18–Richard Stengel resigned yesterday as president and chief executive officer of the National Constitution Center after two years on the job to become managing editor of Time magazine.

Stengel had spent the bulk of his career with the newsweekly before coming to the center in 2004. In 20 years at Time, he had served as national editor, culture editor, political writer, political essayist and editor of Time.com.

“Did I ever think I’d leave this early? No,” Stengel said yesterday. “But I’m becoming a leader of one of the greatest brands in history, and I think I leave the Constitution Center in fabulous condition.”

John C. Bogle, chairman of the center’s board of trustees, said that he was saddened by Stengel’s decision to leave.

“I don’t think there’s a job in the United States of America other than this one at Time that would have caused him to leave the National Constitution Center,” said Bogle, offering words of praise for Stengel’s performance at the center. “He’s taken us from being a neophyte institution to an established part of the Philadelphia firmament.”

Stengel, 51, succeeded the center’s founding CEO, Joseph M. Torsella, on March 1, 2004.

During Stengel’s tenure on Independence Mall, the center expanded its programming, adding changing exhibits — such as the recently concluded one on Benjamin Franklin — and hosting frequent talks by journalists, authors, issue advocates and public officials. Among the speakers were U.S. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer.

And, in February, the center received a five-year, $6.4 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation to set up several additional programs. Among them are a Great Debates series to be launched in the fall and the Peter Jennings Institute for Journalists and the Constitution.

Attendance at the center last year was reported as 989,562, up 3 percent from the year before and in keeping with the goal, announced at the center’s creation, of having one million visitors per year.

“When I arrived, we were an organization that was set up to get open, not an organization that was set up to operate,” Stengel said. “The last two years were about how to make the center a sustainable entity, and I think we’ve learned a lot about how to do that.”

Bogle set no timetable for selecting a new CEO, saying that the board would make its choice “as expeditiously as we can.”

In naming Stengel as managing editor, John Huey, editor-in-chief of Time Inc., said that Stengel’s years at the Constitution Center had given him “a new appreciation for the skills and strategy required to harness the energy of an organization like Time.”

Stengel had both “the outsider’s perspective and the insider’s knowledge” to do the job, Huey said. Stengel takes over at Time on June 15.

“It’s never a good time to leave, but I feel the ship is sailing in the right direction, with the strong revenues from the Franklin show, the higher national profile,” Stengel said. “This was impossible to refuse.”

Contact staff writer Larry Eichel at 215-854-2415 or leichel@phillynews.com.

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