But within Time Inc., as multiple sources attested, there is more bewilderment than panic. Said a journalist at one of the news magazines, “People just wanna know what the hell their endgame is.” Another: “A lot of head-scratching.” It’s inevitable that the New York media community will assume nefarious intentions on the part of the Kochs, who are believed to be making a mark on the Trump presidency through their close association with Vice President Mike Pence, as Mayer meticulously outlined in her latest New Yorker feature. But media executives I called on were skeptical that the Kochs were putting up $500 million just to gain further leverage on the country’s national conversation, though that certainly could be one reason. “I don't think Time and Fortune have nearly the kind of influence they once did,” said a former Time Inc. executive. “They don’t give you enormous influence in the world today.”

So why are they doing this? “We have a longstanding policy of not commenting on deals,” a spokesman for Koch Industries told me. Representatives for Time Inc. and Meredith likewise declined to comment.

The Kochs, it’s worth noting, already have something of a relationship with Time. They have thrice appeared on the magazine’s Time 100 list, in 2011, 2014, and 2015. David Koch, known as the bon vivant of the two—with a $17 million Park Avenue pad in Manhattan, where he has donated astronomical sums to institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center and New York–Presbyterian Hospital—once did lunch with former Time editor Rick Stengel, and he is a regular at the annual Time 100 gala. Several attendees shared with me their recollections of David having a grand old time at the soirée, comfortably rubbing elbows in a room filled with the types of celebrity, business, and philanthropic elites who tend to be on the opposite side of the Kochs’ ruthlessly capitalist ideology. “He was kind of swaying in the way you’d expect a gangly conservative billionaire to dance,” said a person who had their eye on him at one of the galas. “He obviously has some personality and some life in him. There are other extremely conservative people who come to that event and don’t feel comfortable there. He was.”

It’s also not clear if Time Inc.’s weekly news titles would reside with Meredith long term should the Koch-backed deal go through. Part of the reason the 2013 sale fell apart was because Meredith didn’t want Time, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated. The current negotiations are believed to be for the entire portfolio, minus several divestitures that are already in the works (Sunset, Golf, Time Inc. U.K.), which has led to speculation that Meredith might decide to unload the newsweeklies after acquiring them. (Perhaps to the Kochs as a play thing?, some of my sources wondered.) Meredith would presumably be more keen on keeping Time Inc.’s resident cash cow, People, and perhaps Entertainment Weekly.

However all of this shakes out—and there are whispers of other suitors being in the mix—it seems all but certain that another failed sale would only elevate concerns about the future of the company, which says that it remains committed to a strategy of sharpening the focus on its core brands, investing in digital and working to stabilize print.

The fact that there is not more of a panic about a potential sale involving the Kochs, precisely the sort of partisan buyer that wouldn’t have been given a second meeting in days gone by, suggests how far things have fallen for Time and its parent company. Time Inc. has been drifting this way for a decade or more, with successive management juntas unable to change course. And, now, there’s an increasing sense that time—the pun is inevitable—is running out. On its earnings call last week, Time Inc. gave an outlook of $400 million in profit this year and a minimum of $500 to $600 million per year over the next three years. But one of the sources I spoke with for this story, who is knowledgable about Time Inc.’s finances, offered a particularly dire prediction for what will happen if a sale or a turnaround continues to elude the company, given the rate of yearly decline, minimal digital growth and aggressive cost-cutting to date: “If they don’t do a sale in the next year, they’ll probably be teetering on some level of insolvency in the near future.”