Fitting BusinessWeek into the Bloomberg culture

Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times writes Monday about the issues facing Bloomberg as it melds BusinessWeek magazine into its operations.

Clifford writes, “Mr. Winkler said magazine articles would be evaluated on the same metrics as articles for the terminal: did they move markets? But many of the Businessweek articles do not run on the terminals, placing them outside the metrics system. (A spokesman, Carl Fischer, said it was likely that the magazine articles would be evaluated on more qualitative measures.)

“‘They really feel like writing for Businessweek is a waste of time — it’s not making money, they get nothing out it,’ said a former Businessweek employee, who is now at Bloomberg and asked not to be identified.

“Moreover, any breaking items from the magazine will appear elsewhere first. ‘Any scoop from anywhere in the world is going to run on the terminal,’ Mr. Pearlstine said, adding ‘the terminal is the focus of everything we do at Bloomberg.’

“The Businessweek investigative reporters were transferred to the Bloomberg News investigative unit, another challenge for the magazine’s ambitions.”

Read more here.