In the spring, after Meredith Corporation put four of its newly acquired magazines up for sale—Time, Fortune, Money, and Sports Illustrated—there was talk of buyers being locked down by the end of June. The hope was for a speedy resolution in delivering these legendary publications to their next stewards, whoever those may be. While these four were seen as the crown jewels of Time Inc., which Meredith bought in early 2018 following a years-long pursuit, it was Time Inc.’s softer commodities—InStyle, Real Simple, etc.—that Meredith was salivating over. Meredith’s main priority was to integrate the rest of the Time Inc. portfolio into its business operations; dealing with the titles it was destined to get rid of would only be a distraction. Meanwhile, for as long as those titles remained under Meredith’s purview, they would essentially be consigned to a state of purgatory. It was in everyone’s interest to fire up the term sheets as quickly as possible.

But the casual June 30 timeline turned out to be a fantasy. No deals have been struck, no one at any of the titles knows who their new owner is going to be, and employees are starting to get antsy. “It’s dragged out way longer than expected,” one writer told me. “Everybody’s ready for it to be done,” an editor agreed.

People familiar with the auctions told me they’re in the ninth inning, down to a small handful of final suitors with each of the sales. Time and Fortune (which was shopped as a package with Money) are being brokered by Citigroup, while Houlihan Lokey is handling Sports Illustrated. On Tuesday, New York Post media columnist Keith Kelly floated a “fast-spreading rumor” that Alex Rodriguez is among the S.I. courtiers. Kelly also reported of S.I. that “sources think the protracted negotiations over a sale mean one thing: the price is dropping.”

The bankers, as well as various top editors who’ve been looped in, have mostly managed to keep bidders’ names under wraps. There’s a sense that the stakes here are high—these are iconic but challenged brands that have struggled in recent years under Time Inc., which was essentially managing its own decline through endless downsizing. Therefore, no one involved in the sale process wants to do anything that could jeopardize the opportunity to secure new owners who have the patience (and the stomach) to invest. (Meredith, it’s worth noting, is one of the industry’s sturdier ships; it’s just not the right vessel for the magazines at hand.)

As I’ve previously reported, there was no shortage of shoppers. The initial crop of casual-to-serious suitors was around 80, and Meredith engaged with about 15 of them in the earliest round of talks, with preliminary, non-binding bids in the $200 million range. Given that the magazine business is weathering an inexorable decline, the apparently sanguine interest seemed an auspicious sign for dead-tree dinosaurs. But the reality that no one has yet reached the finish line has some insiders feeling a bit skittish. Might an appetizing deal fall apart as the parties haggle over terms? That’s essentially where things are at. But Meredith chairman Steve Lacy sounded an optimistic note during a quarterly financial presentation on August 10, telling analysts that the company anticipates having sale agreements in place in the “early” part of its 2019 fiscal year, which began on July 1. “We’ve made significant progress,” he said.

Among media insiders, the Fortune sale in particular has provoked a rather tenacious piece of gossip: that Salesforce C.E.O. Marc Benioff either was, or still is, or had been but is no longer, in the mix. Benioff is a regular character in Fortune’s coverage and is said to have a solid rapport with the editors there, and the prospect of a friendly billionaire who knows the publication well was appealing to staffers. “People were, for obvious reasons, extremely pleased to hear that,” one insider told me. (“We don’t comment on rumors,” a Salesforce rep told me.) Fortune, for its part, has a robust and lucrative events component, which makes it an attractive buy. As far as the print product goes, two people familiar with the plan told me it involves rebooting the magazine as a boutique proposition with a higher price point and a more luxury feel, harkening back to Fortune’s conception, when Henry Luce created it in 1929, as a “distinguished and de luxe” accoutrement for the “Super-Class”—“a barrier so high that only the reader both enthusiastic and well-to-do will vault it,” as Luce famously wrote in a letter to advertisers. “The bottom line is that they want to go to a higher-value product,” one source said.

For the time being, though, Fortune and its sister mags will plod along as “discontinued operations” under their current owner. One hears from insiders about how vastly different Meredith’s culture is from Time Inc.’s, so it’s not as if anyone will be disappointed when Meredith bids them farewell. At the same time, they acknowledge that Meredith’s top brass seem like competent leaders and decent people, who want to leave Time Inc.’s most cherished legacies in good hands.

Case in point: Meredith spurned a more than $300 million offer from American Media Inc., whose scandalized owner, David Pecker, is now embroiled in the federal probe into Michael Cohen, thanks to The National Enquirer’s role in burying stories about the alleged extramarital dalliances of Donald Trump. “Thank fucking God they didn’t sell to Pecker,” one of my sources said. “To their credit, the Meredith crowd runs a tight ship, and has a sense of integrity.”