Categories: OLD Media Moves

BusinessWeek staffers departing

The following is a list of BusinessWeek staffers departing the weekly business magazine in the wake of Wednesday’s reorganization. The departures came as the magazine was closing its investment outlook double issue, which made the closing even more hectic.

Some of the following took buyout offers, while others were laid off.

— Tony Bianco. As mentioned Wednesday, Bianco is a longtime senior writer at the magazine and the author of a number of books, including â€œThe Bully of Bentonville: How the High Cost of Wal-Martâ€™s Everyday Low Prices is Hurting America.â€? He also wrote â€œRainmaker,â€? a biography of the former Wall Street deal maker Jeff Beck. His official title was national correspondent.

–Â Margarita Eiroa. Eiroa worked in the photo department as a traffic manager.

— Photo director Larry Lippman.

— Amy Dunkin, an associate editor who worked in personal business. I worked with Amy during my tenure at BusinessWeek and found her to be a great editor.

— Jeff Laderman, a senior editor at the magazine.Â Another outstanding business journalist. He was the author of the “BusinessWeek Insider’s Guide to Mutual Funds.”

— Steve Rosenbush, a staff writer for BusinessWeek.com.

–Â Gail Edmondson, a senior correspondent in the Frankfurt bureau, was the only bureau person affected.

Then there were supposedlyÂ four from the business side who also lost their jobs. The cuts wereÂ supposed to happen Tuesday but for some reason got pushed to Wednesday, said one editor.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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Jennifer says:
December 13, 2007 at 9:53 am
Amy and Jeff are two of the best editors I ever worked with. Ever. Both are so skilled, so full of knowledge, so patient... It was always a pleasure to work with them when I was a BW writer and I think their departure is a huge loss for BW. However, they're both incredible and I've got no doubt they'll be making an impact somewhere else before too long.
FOB says:
December 13, 2007 at 10:46 am
The lost context here, of course, is that this marks the third or fourth wave of firings under Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adler, who is sacrificing bodies as he desperately veers from one failed strategy to the next. The dirty little secret is that his own days are numbered. Mother McGraw's stock price has plummeted and S&P is no longer throwing off bales of cash. The parent company can ill afford to indulge a trophy property that is losing more and more money each year as advertisers flee in droves. Adler's scandalous mismanagement of the magazine, once one of the country's top business publications with a truly global reach, should be a case study in J-Schools AND business schools. Might make for a nice feature story in Portfolio, Forbes or Fortune, come to think of it.
punch says:
December 13, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Adler was given the task of "fixing" a high-quality magazine that really wasn't broken. It needed to adapt itself to the Web and address advertisers' discomfort. But those issues are industrywide, and instead of tailoring the changes to meet those concerns in a measured way, he overhauled the magazine. I'll say as a journalist based in D.C., one of the saddest end-results has been to its Washington coverage, which is almost non-existent. The "money and politics" beat remains open despite -- I am certain -- applications from many qualified candidates in recent months.
Steve's folly says:
December 18, 2007 at 12:23 am
I could go on at some length about the horrendous human and journalistic casualties Adler has inflicted on a once-proud publication, but others have already done so. So I'll just note this:
While Addled has further winnowed the ranks of experienced, competent and, in some cases, inspired journalists, he has signed off on the appointment of a former party planner, Martin Keohan, to head the online unit. Keohan's brunch companion, good buddy and news editor, Patricia O'Connell, whose previous gig was at Star magazine.
They weren't fired. Good journalists were. Sorta says it all, don't it