Ayn Rand Nation Excerpt at Bloomberg View

Bloomberg View published today an excerpt from Ayn Rand Nation, which can be found here.

The Bloomberg excerpt is from Chapter Nine, "The First Teabagger," in which I describe how Rand made comments in a radio interview that presaged the Tea Party, and predicted a market crash worse than 1929. She also roundly denounced budget deficits, and generally sounded as if she'd hopped off a stage at a Tea Party Rally.

There's also an article on the book at Counterpunch today by Pam Martens, a former Wall Street whistle-blower.

© 2011 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.
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AYN RAND NATION: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul, will be published by St. Martin's Press on Feb. 28, 2012. Click here to pre-order the book from Amazon.com, and here to pre-order from Barnes & Noble. Follow me on Twitter @gary_weiss.

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.

Goodbye, "Howard" McGraw

BusinessWeek salutes "Howard" McGraw

Above is a story that has been on the BusinessWeek.com website for the past three days: an AP obituary of former McGraw-Hill CEO Harold McGraw that gets his name wrong in the headline.

BW was not alone. Apparently nobody at the AP or its member papers (such as this one) noticed that his name is "Harold" not "Howard." Otherwise I assume there would have been a correction and all these mistakes would have been fixed.

Strange isn't it? You'd expect that if the error was going to be corrected anywhere, it would be at BW.

I guess there's a bit of symbolic significance in this boner going uncorrected. Over the past few years, BW has become unrecognizable since the days when McGraw ran the magazine's former parent in the seventies and early eighties. One observer recently contended that BW had morphed over the past few years into the "Reader's Digest of American finance."

McGraw was an old-school CEO who rejected a bid from American Express, handsome as it was, on the grounds that Amex would not have been a proper steward of the company or the magazine.

The New York Times reported in its obituary that McGraw said Amex “lacks the integrity, morality and sensitivity” to merge with McGraw-Hill.

Wow. Can you imagine anyone rejecting a bid for a media company today on the grounds that an acquirer lacked "integrity, morality and sensitivity"? I wonder sometimes if those words have been cut out of the dictionary.

On the contrary, the current CEO Terry McGraw, his son, was only too happy to toss BW under the bus when it ceased being profitable. He put it up for sale and would have sold it to a venture capital outfit if the price had been right.

I happen to think that Terry's a good guy, but I doubt very much that he would have rejected a buyer for BW because it lacked "integrity, morality and sensitivity." Hell, it looks like he wouldn't have rejected a buyer even if it failed to come up with much in the way of bucks. Bloomberg paid chump change for BW.

So of course nobody noticed Harold McGraw's name was misspelled. It's also not really surprising that rather than pointing out how the company and BW were saved by this forgotten old man, BW runs an AP obit that underplays the Amex battle and doesn't even get his name right.

That figures. The correct spelling of his name wasn't the only thing that has been forgotten.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

R.I.P. BusinessWeek's Independent Identity

A BusinessWeek editor reconsiders traveling to Planet Bloomberg

There's a classic Twilight Zone episode about a bunch of aliens landing on earth. The earthlings rest easy when they find that the aliens have a book called "To Serve Man." So everybody happily climbs on the spaceship until the end, when the rest of the book is translated. The heroine shouts, "It's a cookbook!"

I was thinking back on that great old episode as I pondered the fate of the staff of BusinessWeek after its acquisition by Bloomberg L.P.

No question, the magazine has improved in a number of ways, and has gotten praised to the hilt, largely because the depleted staff is now supplemented by people from the wire. It's helped a lot that recent BW stories have been by name journos on the Bloomberg payroll like Amanda Bennett, author Roger Lowenstein and my former Portfolio colleague Dan Golden, a Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter.

But as for the BW staff, which was pleased and excited by the prospect of being acquired by this mighty news organization--well, let's face it, that old Twilight Zone episode isn't off the mark at all, as best as I can see.

Prior to the acquisition, BW folks were assured that they were cherished, and that the quality of the staff was a major consideration in the decision to pick up the magazine for peanuts.

That was the promise. Then came reality.

There was a substantial head-chopping when the magazine was acquired late last year, with 123 people losing their jobs, and then another crushing layoff last week, involving 25 staffers getting pink slips and another 12 moving to the wire.

How many are left? It's hard to say. BW hasn't published a masthead in a very long time, which makes the calculation difficult. So does the fact that a lot of BW people -- some officially listed on Bloomberg directories as being on the staff -- actually work for the wire, not the magazine.

Here's a baseline: When I left the magazine in 2004, there were 251 people on the masthead of the domestic edition. That counts pretty much all the people on the editorial staff, including a couple who were on contract and not on staff.

And here's the best guess as to the size of the current staff:

During the layoff last week, Ad Age reported that 25 people were laid off and another 12 were transferred to the wire, accounting for "roughly one-third" of the staff (that is, the editorial staff, the writer of the article tells me). If those numbers are correct, there were 111 people before the layoff and 74 afterward, more or less.

That number seems a bit low. One insider, using the directories available internally, tells me that the editorial staff now comprises about 100 people. But that's just an estimate.

A more interesting indicator can be found by looking at the number of New York-based writers employed by the magazine.

In 2004 there were about 35 of us, with titles ranging from "senior writer" to "department editor," writing about subjects ranging from finance to economics to the Internet and science. Most of us also edited from time to time, but writing articles was the main part of the job.

Today there are three New York-based writers at the magazine. Now, not all the vanished are out on the street. Most of my colleagues at the Finance department, for instance, now write for the wire.

What this means is that BW's institutional memory is fading fast, its corporate culture has been totally up-ended, and its independent identity is pretty much gone.

Does any of this matter? Well, as Starkman points out in his blog, the magazine was pretty much at death's door at the time of the acquisition. Ad sales were collapsing, as they were for most business magazines, and the magazine's editorial franchise was staggering. To quote Starkman, the magazine became "the Reader's Digest of American finance."

It was either sale or a funeral. Still, it's tempting to consider what might have been, had McGraw-Hill decided to keep the magazine and try to turn it around, rather than give up.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

More on BusinessWeek Under Bloomberg

MediaWeek has an article out today on Bloomberg "putting its stamp on BusinessWeek," a subject I've dealt with in the past several times.

The one big change, of course, is that Bloomberg staffers are now writing a good number of BW articles, including cover stories. This is obviously not something existing staffers like very much, but I don't really see what choice Bberg has, given how the staff has been decimated in recent years, particularly if there are plans to expand the size of the magazine.

I've heard that nowadays most BW writers are now working for the wire. The number exclusively devoted to the magazine was estimated for me by somebody there as approximately ten, and possibly fewer.

As for changes in the traditional newsmagazine writing style, I've noticed a de-emphasis on analysis, which used to be the magazine's forte.

[New editor in chief Josh] Tyrangiel declined to generalize about plans to change the magazine’s style, including moving it closer to that of Bloomberg, which prides itself on writing for the nonbusiness person although its primary audience is its terminal user. “I’m not a fan of the throat-clearing paragraph,” he said, an approach he noted was rare in Bloomberg stories.

I've never encountered that expression very much so I ran it through Google, and I found that one of the few hits for the expression "throat clearing paragraph" came in this webcast interview Tyrangiel gave while he was managing editor of Time. com.

In that interview, Tyrangiel said he didn't favor "throat clearing paragraphs" at Time.com--a website. He said that in the context of saying long-form journalism didn't work on the web.

Of course, BW is a paper publication, and sometimes it publishes work that approximates long-form journalism. So........ what is he trying to say? Is he saying that BW should be written like an online publication?

Mediaweek, bless its heart, didn't get any elaboration from the new EIC. A definition of "throat clearing paragraph" might have helped too.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

More on the New Bloomberg BusinessWeek

I'm surprised that nobody pointed out to me the gaping omissions from my blog item last week on the latest issue of BusinessWeek. I just picked up a copy at my local newsstand, and noticed them immediately.

Apart from its all-Bloomberg cover package, there are at least two other firsts, both very promising.

First there is a long takeout by Daniel Golden describing how for-profit colleges are targeting the military. Dan is a Bloomberg reporter, and he is modestly described as just that in his six-word biography.

Come now, Bloomberg, don't be shy! Dan Golden is a Pulitzer Prize winning former Wall Street Journal reporter who was a senior editor at the late Condé Nast Portfolio . His article is rich, detailed and above all, looooong, certainly by recent BW standards. I copied it to Microsoft Word and noticed that it weighed in as just under 3500 words. That's just under standard Portfolio feature article length.

Now, it didn't have quite as much analysis as I usually like to see in such things, but I don't want to quibble because it's refreshing to see long form journalism, especially in the decimated pages of BusinessWeek. Bravo!

The second thing nobody pointed out to me is just a little stylistic thing, but significant: in the new issue there is none of the loony page numbers that had been introduced under an atrocious new design, in which page 10, say, would be "010," computer-style. This pretentiousness has been eliminated. Good thing.

These are positive changes, particularly the long piece. Maybe there's hope yet for BusinessWeek.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

An All-Bloomberg BusinessWeek Cover

I haven't actually seen the new issue of BusinessWeek out today, but the online version indicates something of a historical moment: for the first time since Bloomberg L.P. took over the magazine, the cover story and its sidebars were all written by staffers from the wire, not the magazine.

What they produced was provocative and needed to be told, describing how the Street has defeated Wall Street reforms. Certainly the cover (left) is as hard-hitting as anything the magazine might have produced in its heyday.

I particularly liked the sidebar describing (a bit too briefly) how the SEC has watered down reforms.

A longer version of the same story appeared on the wire, and was not linked from the far briefer BW account. That's a reversal of the usual wire service equation, with magazines providing full accounts and the wires providing summaries. Obviously there's more space on the wire, thanks to the falloff in advertising under the former regime, and I wonder if BW going to morph into some kind of "Bloomberg Digest." If so, the online edition of the magazine should link to fuller versions appearing on the wire.

Another change has to do with the writing style. Like most newsmagazines, BW has traditionally brought to the table a strong point of view. Sometimes that point of view is wrong ("Death of Equities") but the magazine always, or most of the time, or ideally, took a stance.

In this cover package there is less analysis than would have been common in the past. The cover language carves out a position that is not explicitly stated in the articles. The final paragraph of the cover story, which ordinarily states the magazine's view, is largely a quote representing the viewpoint of others:

A failure wouldn't surprise frustrated lawmakers disappointed by the turn in Washington. "My greatest fear for the last year has been an economic collapse," says Representative Brad Miller (D-N.C), who sits on Frank's House Financial Services Committee. "My second greatest fear was that the economy would stabilize and the financial industry would have the clout to defeat the fundamental reforms that our nation desperately needs. My greatest fear seems less likely...but my second greatest fear seems more likely every day."

The magazine takes no position. Now that's objective, but magazines aren't objective. It's a different kind of journalism. It was not uncommon in the past for the same writers of the main stories to weigh in with an opinion piece or "commentary," which stated the view of the magazine as well as the writer. There was also an editorial page, though that was eliminated a while back as a cost savings.

Compare the latest cover story to this one by Peter Coy, which I chose at random from back in August, "The Case for Optimism." The title itself presents a viewpoint. The concluding paragraph reads:

The case for optimism is really a case for being open-minded—giving due weight to the possibility that things will get better than you think. Of course, no one really knows. But rational optimism, along with a pinch of Mary Pruitt-style enthusiasm, just might go a long way.

You may agree or disagree, but you knew where BW stood.

Apart from the writing style, this all-Bloomberg-wire effort further substantiates that the BW acquisition is fulfilling a major editorial function for Bloomberg, by giving its reporters a forum for their best work.

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

More Inklings of the New Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Wow, third item in a row on BusinessWeek. OK, anyone not interested can pass this one by, but I think that the transformation of the largest-circulation business magazine is of some significance (and I'd feel that way even if I hadn't worked there for eighteen years).

The first issue of "Bloomberg BusinessWeek" is on the stands, and it already provides a sneak peek at how the magazine is going to be changed under its new management. The issue at left (there is a small "Bloomberg" above BusinessWeek), went to press exactly 24 hours after Bloomberg took over BW, and already changes can be seen in the magazine.

Bloomberg has already moved fast, closing BusinessWeek SmallBiz and adding two new columnists: Charlie Rose and veteran tech writer Rich Jaroslovsky. I'm underwhelmed about Rose, as it reminds me of BW's foray into "celebrity columnists" under the old regime. But I thought the addition of Jaroslovsky is intriguing, and may be a better indication of the primary editorial focus of BW under its new ownership, which is to make maximum use of the existing Bloomberg staff.

The media coverage of the ownership change has, I think, failed to adequately emphasize the fact that BW writers appear to be deployed to the wire, not the magazine. Meanwhile, the Bloomberg staff now has a far more visible "platform" (man, do I hate that word) for its work.

There are vestiges of the old regime. The cover story is by BW's Stanley Reed, and there are other pieces by BW writers, including one by Steve Baker, who is not being retained. A column by Gene Marcial, who also is going, likewise appears. No surprise: the magazine changed hands on Tuesday, Dec. 1, a day before the magazine was going to press.

But already, Bloomberg people were putting their stamp on things. A preview of things to come can be found in this article on hedge fund guy John Paulson (who, coincidentally, I profiled in Portfolio). BW has perfectly competent people covering hedge funds, and most of the finance staff has been retained by Bloomberg. But the article was not written by any of them, and rather is a group effort by four Bloomberg reporters.

It's a good piece, informative, but it lacks graphics, which sort of surprised me (no performance chart for the guy?) and, also surprisingly, contained no comparative performance data for the S&P 500. I know, hedgies don't like to be compared to the S&P. Tough. That's the performance benchmark familiar to most readers. Indeed, the benchmark used in the article is not even identified.

But the main thing that struck me was the writing style--flat, and lacking in what we used to call "forward spin." The way BW articles have traditionally been written, a point of view was always present even in the briefest article. By the end, or "kicker," you knew what the writer (actually the magazine itself, given the group editing) thought about the subject matter. It was formulaic and perhaps hackneyed, but it worked. Here is a good example of what I'm talking about, a Matt Goldstein article from 2007. Note that it has a particular point of view, which the Paulson article lacks.

The Paulson article begins by raising a question it doesn't (and really can't) answer, which is whether Paulson is a "one megahit wonder." No analysis, no stab at "forward spin." Instead we have a competent article that, I believe, breaks news by describing Paulson's latest and not-so-great investment returns.

By the way, if it is a news beat, why doesn't the article say so? Why did I have to go to Google News to find out if it is? Why doesn't it say "according to documents obtained by BW" or something like that? The reader ought to know if he's reading it in BW first. And the magazine should not be afraid to thump its chest a bit if it has a scoop, even a minor one.

In all, a nice piece, but basically not dramatically different than what you'd find on the Bloomberg wire.

But you know, that seems to be the point of the acquisition. It won't be great for the former BW writers who now toil for the wire and may have to fight to get in the magazine. It sure isn't great for the former technology writer Steve Wildstrom, who used to do the tech column and was not retained.

BW readers, however, get the resources of an immense staff and the talents of Jaroslovsky and other experienced Bloomberg writers. Will BW readers notice, or care, about the changing bylines and the stylistic differences? Do they miss Wildstrom and "forward spin"? More importantly, will advertisers?

I don't know. What I do know is that nothing like this has ever been tried before. It must be a morale-crushing experience for BW's survivors but hey, that's progress.

Another thing I know, or at least suspect, is that there will be another redesign. And I know, not suspect, that it could not possibly be worse than the last one.

UPDATE: Clusterstock, one of the more popular financial blogs, has a follow-up with a hat tip to this item. Seems that BW just isn't on as many required-reading lists as it should be.

Also, I neglected to point out that "forward spin" isn't just a stylistic nicety but a selling point in the quest for advertisers.

WWD points out that the magazine doesn't have a masthead and that there was no letter from the new editor. I don't think either is very significant. However, if the masthead is eliminated entirely it would be a further indication of the melding of the two organizations.

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

Goodbye McGraw-Hill, Hello Bloomberg

The BusinessWeek staff enters a New World, its corridors paved with gold

Today is the last day BusinessWeek will be within the corporate grasp of "Mother McGraw," as McGraw-Hill is known to its older employees. At midnight, eighty years of M-H control comes to an end, and the magazine becomes part of Bloomberg L.P., the staff intact except for 123 employees who were graciously "included in the restructuring program."

Given the amount of attention this change in ownership received, at least for a time, it's striking how little is known about what will happen to BusinessWeek after Bloomberg takes control. It's not even clear if it have an appreciable staff of its own, and staffers I know who were retained were brought into the wire, not the magazine. Only the highest editors--ironically, those with the greatest responsibility for its fate--were brought into the magazine proper (for the time being). All except the editor in chief, who was on the list of 123.

I'm sure that Terry McGraw, the CEO of the company, must feel terrible about having to get rid of the company's flagship publication. But business is business, and shareholder prerogatives must be protected (and this is a good example of why public ownership is incompatible with journalism).

I've never understood why Terry let the magazine go into such a decline. Did he really think hiring a wine critic would put BW back on its feet? Did he really think that patronizing attempts to curry favor with readers would keep advertisers from fleeing? Did he really think that expanding its ranks of high-level editors, at the same time that writers and line editors were being cut, was the right thing to do?

But that's all history now. The story of the decline, fall and possible rescue of BW will be a good journalism review story, one of these days.

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

A Peek at the New BusinessWeek

Somebody sent me a Bloomberg story that ran today on Andrew Cuomo, New York's attorney general and a rising star in the Democratic party, describing how Cuomo took cash from lawyers with business before his office.

It's a great piece, and it occurred to me that this kind of story is an example of why Bloomberg need BusinessWeek--and what the magazine is going to look like under its new owners.

The magazine has reportedly jettisoned over 130 people (the exact number is disputed by Bloomberg), and some of the most prominent writers--including all of its columnists--are being let go, including, startlingly, longtime economics writer Mike Mandel.

How could Bloomberg get rid of such prominent, well-known journalists? The reason, I think, is that Bloomberg doesn't want prominent, well-known journalists writing for the magazine. It wants to clear the decks for BW to become a showcase for its preexisting talent, such as the writers of the Cuomo story. Unless they're picked up by the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, stories like that don't get much mileage. That will change when BW comes under Bloomberg's wing.

Now, I could be dead wrong about this -- and we won't know for sure until the mgazine has appeared for a while under its new owners--but my sense is that BW's existing writers are going to play second fiddle to that urgent corporate need.

That would explain why BW editors are staying with the magazine, while writers (such as my old colleagues covering finance) are apparently mainly going to the wire, if they are kept at all.

So I guess that the bottom line of the Bloomberg acquisition is that Bloomberg will be a far better steward of BW than any of the other buyers would have been. But for the existing staff, particularly if they were writers, it's going to be one hell of an adjustment.

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.