BusinessWeek will be quality with hiring of new editors

James Ledbetter, the editor of The Big Money site, likes the hiring of former Fortune managing editor Eric Pooley and New York magazine editorial director Hugo Lindgren to help oversee the content in Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek.

Ledbetter writes, “The external message seems to be that BW is going to put a premium on the high-quality writing that Pooley and Lindgren prize. That clearly can’t hurt the magazine, but it’s not necessarily what the publication truly needs. I wrote last year that Bloomberg’s purchase of BW was really all about the Web site. I still think that is largely true; the problem is that traffic to BusinessWeek.com, while still formidable, is dropping rather steeply. Tyrangiel, who came from Time.com, knows he has to address this, and will probably do it with someone other than these two editors.

“That doesn’t mean, though, that BW‘s print product is irrelevant. It may not be clear to those outside the Bloomberg world just how vast that empire is; Bloomberg produces mountains and mountains of stories and data every day, the majority of which go unseen by anyone but a few thousand traders at their screens. And it’s not just wire stories: There are features, investigative stories, columns (Pooley has been writing a monthly one), even book reviews and cultural pieces. A few talented editors may be able to shape that material — which they get for free — into a compelling magazine. With Fortune now coming out only 18 times a year, and Forbes experiencing an even larger drop in its once-mighty Web traffic, a freshened BW could really gain some competitive edge this year. “

Read more here.