Ex-BusinessWeek editor: Bloomberg deal good for the magazine

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Former BusinessWeek editor Stephen Shepard said Thursday night that Bloomberg‘s proposed acquisition of the weekly business magazine is “great” because it helps the acquirer expand its audience.

“They wanted to get into a corporate and government audience,” said Shepard, who is the founding dean of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. “A lot of good journalism that Bloomberg does is not seen.”

Shepard, who was editor of BusinessWeek from 1984 to 2005, said that the deal has “tremendous editorial synergies” and added, “It makes sense to me, and it will be good for business journalism.”

Shepard was speaking Thursday night to a group of 42 college students from 11 universities who were attending a conference on careers in business journalism at CUNY.

Allan Sloan, the senior editor at large at Fortune who was the night’s keynote speaker, also liked the deal.

“I’m glad someone bought it who’s going to keep it alive and invigorate it,” said Sloan. “I think it’s good for the business magazine category.”

Sloan declined to comment on the news that broke during the conference about his employer’s decision to cut back on its annual number of issues.

DISCLOSURE: I worked at BusinessWeek in from March 1993 to November 1994, when Shepard was editor.