He started his journalistic career at the age of 15, when he took over as sports editor of the Pekin, Illinois, Daily Times, while he was still attending high school. (The war was going on, adult males were in short supply and “the publisher didn’t want to hire a woman, so he hired a child instead” was the explanation). He worked for two newspapers after that, including the Chicago Sun-Times. At Time Inc. he was a reporter, writer, bureau chief (Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington and Paris ) and assistant managing editor at the weekly LIFE. In 1974, he was the founding editor of People, a job he held for eight years. He then moved over to edit the monthly LIFE, during which period the magazine won two National Magazine Awards. After serving as Editorial Director of all Time Inc. magazines, he retired in 1993, but has continued to serve the company as a contract consultant.
Among his editorial experiences were covering the sometimes violent desegregation of southern schools, the transition of California to the most populous state in the nation (beating out New York), the assassination of President John F. Kennedy where he obtained exclusively for LIFE the famous Zapruder home movie of the murder, the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson and his efforts to manage the war in Vietnam, the 1968 student riots in Paris and the rise of the neo-Nazi movement in West Germany.
In 2005, Stolley moved to Santa Fe , New Mexico , where he both writes and reports stories about the mountain states for People, TIME and Fortune and contributes to Time Inc. editorial management.