Businessweek's No-Scoop Policy May Be a Problem

The newly redesigned Bloomberg Businessweek is out, and seems to be getting generally favorable reviews, such as this one by former BW chief of correspondents Joe Weber.

I've been jaded by constant BW redesigns--this has got to be at least the fourth redesign in recent years--but I think that this one may be the best. A lot of the junk added in the last editorial regime has been discarded, and the magazine has a much more substantial feel, with longer articles and less of a "Readers Digest" quality. Old-timers will find this new magazine reminiscent of the magazine in its salad days--with some exceptions, and they are substantial.

First, the magazine lacks a strong editorial voice. That may develop in the weeks to come, but seems contrary to the Bloomberg culture.

BW in the old days was noted for taking distinct, somewhat "reformist" positions on issues, both in its long-discarded editorial page and in staff-written commentaries accompanying news articles. It was a contrast to Forbes, which has always been right-leaning and libertarian.

When BW worked well as a magazine, for instance, a cover package as significant as the Goldman scandal would have been accompanied by a strong, staff-written commentary and/or editorial. In this issue there was a column by Michael Lewis, and it was, of course, a great piece of work. But Lewis is a freelancer with a point of view all his own, and doesn't speak for the magazine.

That's a quibble, however, compared to a far more substantive issue. In Stephanie Clifford's article in the New York Times today, she reported as follows:

Moreover, any breaking items from the magazine will appear elsewhere first. “Any scoop from anywhere in the world is going to run on the terminal,” [Bloomberg chief content officer Norman] Pearlstine said, adding “the terminal is the focus of everything we do at Bloomberg.”

To me, this is stunning. How can you have a news magazine that doesn't break news?

As far back as the 1990s, BW used to run certain time-sensitive, competitive articles online -- not on the Internet but on America Online, which used to carry BW exclusively back then -- a few hours before they ran in the magazine. However, this was done sparingly, for the simple reason that it eroded BW's franchise as a news magazine.

Indeed, one of the "ten commandments" of the former BW editor Steve Shepard was that BW breaks news. This was essential, for it was believed that otherwise BW would not be worth reading.

If a scoop runs in Bloomberg first, it is no different from any BW competitor getting to a story first.

I have no idea if there are any exceptions to the no-scoop rule, such as major investigations by the BW staff. What I do know is that a weekly news magazine that doesn't consistently break news is not going to be of much value to either readers or advertisers, no matter how many pages are run or how pretty it may be.

For the sake of my alma mater, I hope that Pearlstine was misquoted.

UPDATE (5/1): Apparently he wasn't misquoted. Bloomberg seems intent on scooping its new acquisition.

In the next issue, Bloomberg's James Sterngold had a devastating scoop in BW on Lehman's Dick Fuld not disclosing $200 million in compensation. His piece moved on the Bloomberg wire at 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon, several hours before BW went to press. It will be old news to BW readers by the time they get their copies of the magazine.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

Businessweek's Masthead -- At Last!

Most of the staff couldn't make it to the shelter

In previous posts I've commented on how BusinessWeek (n/k/a Bloomberg Businessweek) hasn't published a masthead as long as anyone can remember, which has made it hard to track the extent that the magazine has been decimated by layoffs.

Well, the newly redesigned magazine has a masthead, for the first time since before the takeover I believe, and "decimated" seems to be an understatement. As a matter of fact, the image that I have in mind is a nuclear explosion, in which only editors above the rank of senior editor were able to make it into the shelter. Most of the rest seem to have been vaporized.

The masthead was thoughtfully scanned here, and it's a shocker. The once-mighty staff, 250 domestic and overseas personnel as of 2004, has been reduced to 69. I'm not counting Matt Winkler, who is off the masthead but listed as editor in chief, though I am counting the 12 members of the Fortune-like "board of editors."

Here's a somewhat clearer version of the masthead:



Here's the bottom portion of the masthead, showing BW Online:



Every single department editor and domestic correspondent is gone, either fired or absorbed into the Bloomberg wire, and there are now three New York-based writers. There are now just four overseas correspondents. Of the three New York writers, one is Peter Coy, who covers economics, but there is no longer a Chief Economist or an economics editor. Another is Roben Farzad, who is all that is left of my old department that covered Wall Street and finance.

But then again, the magazine will be drawing from the staff of Bloomberg, and includes vast hordes of experienced people, including Pulitzer-winning investigative journalists. It will be interesting to see if this total slash-and-burn of the BW corporate culture results in a magazine that lives up to the hype.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.