Priscilla Painton

Personal

Painton was born in Rome and raised in Paris, where she attended the Lycée de Sèvres and graduated from L'École Alsacienne. She received her B.A. in history from Mount Holyoke College in 1980. She is fluent in French.

Painton currently lives in New York City and is the mother of two children, Isabel and Anthony Smith.

Family

Painton is the daughter of Frederick Painton and the late Patricia High Painton. Frederick was the bureau chief for U.S. News and World Report in Rome, covering Southern Europe and North Africa. He moved to Paris to be its correspondent. He stayed in Paris for about 40 years, but while there moved from U.S. News to Time to help launch its European edition. He retired from Time as a senior writer in 1991. Patricia was a business journalist who was based in Paris for many years.

Career

Painton began her career as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post, and The Berkshire Eagle.

She joined Time as a correspondent for the New York bureau in 1989, specializing in writing about politics and American life. She wrote cover stories on Atlantic City, Orlando, and country music, as well as on the 1992 Man of the Year, Ted Turner, in which she revealed that he suffered from manic depression.

In 1994, Painton became Time's business editor, where she oversaw covers on everything from DreamWorks to derivatives. Later, she was appointed Nation editor, where she managed the magazine's political coverage and all of its domestic news.

As one of the only women managers at Time, she commissioned cover stories on everything from "Is Feminism Dead?" and "The Female Mid-Life Crisis" to whether kids have too much homework. But political coverage still took up most of her time: she oversaw coverage of the rise of Bill Clinton (Time's investigation of the campaign finance scandals in 1996 and 1997 won the Goldsmith Investigative Journalism Prize), the fall of Newt Gingrich, and the election and re-election of George W. Bush.

Painton was promoted to Deputy Managing Editor in 2006. Also that year, Painton taught a journalism course at Mount Holyoke College as a visiting instructor in the English department.

In November 2007, Painton edited a column by Joe Klein about an amendment to the F.I.S.A. law. Liberal bloggers Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald argued that the column was inaccurate. Time later issued a clarification on Klein's column.

In early 2008, Painton joined Simon & Schuster as Editor in Chief of the flagship imprint. Her current title is VP Executive Editor.