The future contents of BusinessWeek

Former BusinessWeek staffer Gary Weiss writes that he has seen what the future content of the magazine will look like under Bloomberg LP’s ownership when he read a story 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.

Weiss writes, “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 magazine 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.”

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