Stphanie Clifford of the New York Times writes Monday about BusinessWeek, where bids are due to acquire it on Tuesday and the magazine has been making changes to address the new media world.
“‘Our mission is to move business forward,’ read the mission statement, handed out at the meeting, and to help readers ‘make smarter decisions in their businesses, careers and investments.’
“Some editorial employees liked the change. ‘We’re trying to serve business readers at a time when business is in disarray,’ said one employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because employees are not authorized to speak publicly about the sale. ‘I think we’ve done remarkably well doing that.’
“But other employees saw a different subtext: their role now was to help business leaders make more money. Though the investigative unit has continued its work, other staff members say their harder-hitting stories have been killed, held or edited into submission.”
Read more here. The article states that BusinessWeek was founded in 1926, but the date is actually 1929.
Clare Malone of The New York writes about Hunterbrook, which is using reporting from journalists to…
The Hollywood Reporter awards editor Tyler Coates is leaving the news organization. His last day will be…
Laura Purkess has been promoted to consumer features editor at The Sun. She will maintain…
Pat Ferrier, senior business reporter at the Coloradoan in Fort Collins, is retiring after 23…
Financial news site TheStreet.com has hired Conway Gittens as an anchor and video producer. His most recent…
The economics and communication departments at Loyola of Maryland have created an interdisciplinary minor for…
View Comments
“Though BusinessWeek.com attracts a lot of page views, 45 percent of those are from slide shows, which Web publishers consider a gimmicky way to increase hits. Only 16 percent of page views came from original articles for the six months ended in April.â€
What a pity it would be if BusinessWeek were to perish. As long as it survives, publishing is better off for having a reminder of the fate that awaits the arrogant, the blinkered and, most of all, the incompetent. Like the decrepit drunks that temperance preachers would trot out to highlight the consequences of moral folly, BusinessWeek exists as a salutary lesson – and that is perhaps its sole remaining virtue.
Consider the above snippet from The Times. BW page views are running at around 50 million per month, according to the visionary John Byrne, who has managed to blow through $21 million (according to paidcontent.com) on two years of reader interaction. If you aren’t hip to the sort of lingo that, up until recently, impressed the short little pants of Terry McGraw, that means Pedro in Podunk posts a comment on a thread and a BW writer links to it in a subsequent post. Kinda like vanity publishing, expect the publisher pays to amplify the ranter. Twenty-one million bucks! As a business model, it’s a vision alright.
But wait, there’s more. At 50 million page views, non-slideshow content is generating just 8 million page views (or thereabouts) per month, and that figure represents between one half and one third the bona fide, valued-by-advertisers traffic the site was pulling six years ago.
Then Terry brought Adler the Unbelievable on board, put Kathy Rebello in charge of online, gutted the DC bureau, chased off everyone over 50 (mostly to their lawyers), hired Jack and Suzy, and filled the site with those scam-a-rama slide shows. (The Best Seersucker Suit! Wonderful Cleveland’s Real Estate Bargains! Batman’s Incredible 401K Portfolio). God only knows what the little fella saw in Steve and Kathy. Maybe they crouched diplomatically at the knee, rather than bending over, while reciting their latest buzz-word mantras in his shell-like ear.
Now Steve and the brains trust reckon they need to be telling business types what they need to know. Gee, Steve, you reckon? A business mag that deals with business problems! Eureka moments don’t come much bigger than that these days, not on 49th and Sixth Avenue, anyway.
Explain it all to the new owner, Steve, I dare you.
"Roger F" is the feckless Aussie Roger Franklin a onetime copy editor at BusinessWeek Online, whose raging incompetence, and constant complaints and inability to perform even the most basic tasks, finally caused him to be fired by Kathy Rebello who had given him numerous chances to buckle down and shape up. BWOL's copy desk began to perform better the minute this marginally intelligent buffoon was out of the picture. It was not uncommon for Roger's battered staff, to work until 3 AM putting the daily publish to bed. His unequaled ability to repeatedly leave practically any project upon which he laid his grimy whiskey-sodden hands in worse shape than when he found it is still legendary among those who remember is late-night tirades, and inane questions via instant messenger. He is a toxic person, and his tirade above proves it. How he was ever hired I still fail to understand, though I suspect the equally incompetent Mike Mercurio had something to do with it.
Aw, c'mon, Timmy. Tell us what you really think.