Bloomberg Businessweek changes year-end issue

Bloomberg Businessweek has traditionally devoted its year-end double issue to an investment guide, but that’s changed this year under its new ownership and management.

It’s a year in review that is very much graphics driven and takes up the entire issue — no technology or finance sections, for example. Advertising-wise, it’s the second largest issue of the year, after only the April relaunch issue.

Writes editor Josh Tyrangiel in an introduction: “We’ve tried to take all the contradictions and complexity of 2010 and make sense of them. Grouping the year into chapters — Normal, Jobs, Spills, Stuck, Currency, and Gaga — our writers, editors, photographers, art directors, and graphic whizzes collaborated to show all the ways in which diverse stories link up, sometimes in linear fashion, sometimes with unexpected leaps such as the price of gasoline, measured in bacon.

“We think it’s unlike any previous issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. One thing’s certain: It ain’t dull.”

The jobs section, for example, has two pages of pictures of job fairs and people standing in line to apply for jobs. Another page in the section uses graphics to explain the unemployment number.