Talking the BusinessWeek deal

Sharon Waxman of The Deal interveiwed Bloomberg‘s Norm Pearlstine about its pending acquisition of BusinessWeek magazine.

Here is an excerpt:

Can we talk about staffing? BusinessWeek has 400 people. Will there be firings?

The quick answer is we don’t know. We only announced the purchase on Tuesday at 5 p.m. What I have said is that we will meet with every BusinessWeek employee in the next six weeks to find out what they do, find out what they might do. We have no skill sets for a controlled circulation magazine. We don’t have the kind of ad sales staff you need to do BusinessWeek.

So those people are safe?

We’re going to meet with everyone and figure out what they do. In the editorial space we need to meet with every BusinessWeek employee for two reasons. There will be an independent staff for the magazine. And we are lucky enough to be a news organization that’s growing and that has needs.

How much time do you give the magazine to be profitable?

I didn’t say the magazine has to be profitable. What we’ve said is we have to run BusinessWeek as a business. But within the world of Bloomberg, there are lots of non-financial reasons to do this deal.

Read more here.