Pearlstine, Norman
PEARLSTINE, NORMAN
PEARLSTINE, NORMAN (1942– ), U.S. journalist. Born in Philadelphia, pa., Pearlstine was educated at Haverford College, where he earned his undergraduate degree, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Pearlstine had a long and varied career in journalism. From 1967 to 1992, he was with Dow Jones & Company, except for a two-year period, from 1978 to 1980, when he was an executive editor at Forbes magazine. He was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Dallas, Detroit, and Los Angeles from 1967 to 1973, when he was named the paper's Tokyo bureau chief. He was named the first managing editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong in March 1976. He returned to the Journal in the spring of 1980 as national news editor. In 1982 he was named editor and publisher of The Wall Street Journal in Brussels. He was appointed managing editor of The Wall Street Journal in September 1983 and became executive editor, one of the most influential positions in American journalism, in June 1991. He helped widen the boundaries of business journalism, from Wall Street and Main Street to Madison Avenue, Hollywood economics, the legal community, and beyond. He resigned from Dow Jones, the parent company, in June 1992. At the Journal, he oversaw the paper's expansion from one section to three, transformed the paper into a high-profile publication, and helped create the Asian and European editions. Just before leaving the organization, he helped create the personal finance magazine Smart Money for Dow Jones and the Hearst Corporation. In April 1993 Pearlstine became general partner of Friday (his wife was Nancy Friday, an author) Holdings lp, a multimedia investment company. Pearlstine, a member of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia and the American Bar Association, in 1995 became editor in chief of Time Inc., the world's largest magazine publisher. In that post, he oversaw the editorial content of Time Inc.'s magazines, including Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, People, In Style, and Entertainment Weekly, among others. In addition, he had overall business responsibilities for Time Inc.'s new media, international, and television activities. In 2005, Pearlstine turned over his responsibilities at Time Inc., to John Huey, who had worked together with him for 17 of his last 25 years, starting at the Journal. At the time, two of every three American adults read at least one of Time Inc.'s 155 magazines each month.
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]