The future BusinessWeek will look like….

Former BusinessWeek staff member Gary Weiss blogs Friday about what the magazine will look like once its sale to Bloomberg is complete, in the wake of the layoffs at the publication in the last two days.

Weiss writes, “It’s not even clear to what extent the new BW will have its own writing staff. Higher-level editors are being retained for the magazine, but so far I haven’t heard of any BW writers being retained to work exclusively for the magazine. This is crucial to the magazine’s identity, if one cares about such things.

“I’ve heard from multiple sources that the new BW will use the Bloomberg wire’s staff to cover Wall Street and finance, and that the people in my old department who have been retained will be going to the wire, not the magazine. Stock market columnist Gene Marcial is being let go, along with the rest of the magazine’s columnists. He had a substantial following, surviving previous layoffs that had already gutted the staff, but he’s history.

“The impression I get is that BW people are a bit in a state of shock over the extent to which the staff is being gutted. Can’t say I blame them. But it was obvious from the moment BW was put up for sale that this outcome was always in the cards. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in their stars, but in Terry McGraw.”

Read more here.