Talking Biz News

Information about business
journalism from the
Carolina Business News Initiative.

Shira Ovide of The Wall Street Journal reports that Bloomberg LP plans to cut BusinessWeek’s staff by 100 or more positions, or roughly 25 percent of the total employees, when it acquires the business magazine early next month.

Ovide reports, “Small numbers of layoffs already have been carried out this week, according to these and other people familiar with the matter.

“Some of these people said another reshuffling is likely to occur this spring, when Bloomberg expects to relaunch the magazine and move BusinessWeek into Bloomberg’s headquarters. Some BusinessWeek employees will be asked to work for Bloomberg’s news service, according to people familiar with the matter.

“In recent weeks, BusinessWeek editorial staffers who wanted to stay after the takeover were asked to submit to Bloomberg their resumes, news clips and 250-word statements about their personal qualifications, according to people familiar with the matter.

“The contenders for the top editor post were asked to write six-page memos outlining how they would integrate BusinessWeek and Bloomberg, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Read more here.

Felix Salmon, who blogs about business and finance for Reuters, has some suggestions for the Gerald Loeb Awards in business and financial journalism after receiving a call from one of the judges that they’re considering adding online categories.

Salmon writes, “So what happens when the Loeb jury tries to drag itself into the 21st Century and honor online journalism? My guess is that it’s going to be in baby steps: the first winners are going to be newspaper brand extensions like Dealbook or Alphaville, and maybe one of those labor-intensive interactive data dumps that the NYT’s digital team is so good at. (Up until now, the Online award has gone to big Flash-based projects on newspaper websites, which isn’t at all what online journalism is really about.)

“But if the Loeb jury wants to go further and start honoring new and disruptive forms of online journalism, they’re going to face enormous difficulties. First there’s the difficulty in defining what even counts as journalism in the first place. If the awards need to go to professional journalists at accredited media organizations, that automatically excludes 90% of the internet, including highly-respected blogs — Calculated Risk, say, or Mark Thoma, or Nouriel Roubini. And insofar as a few great bloggers get picked up by larger media outlets (Mike Konczal, Baseline Scenario), that’s precisely because those media outlets recognized them as being extremely good online journalism before they were picked up. It’s silly to restrict your awards to people who feel like they can or should accept an offer of being hosted on a major media outlet’s website.

“What’s more, the biggest and most successful game-changers online have been startups: Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Politico, and the like. In the business space, TechCrunch, The Business Insider, and many others are setting the pace for what can be done with imagination, hard work, and a lean, aggressive attitude. Yet at the same time it’s almost inconceivable that the Loebs would honor Henry Blodget for his work, given his $2 million fine for securities fraud.”

Read more here. Salmon says he’d like to see Loeb Awards for art direction, which would “be a welcome sign that the Loebs award journalism which isn’t just Important but is also accessible and popular and easy to read.”

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Ron Stodghill, a former business journalist with BusinessWeek, Time and The New York Times, has been named a business columnist for the Charlotte Observer.

Business editor Patrick Scott tells Talking Biz News that Stodghill’s appointment was announced Thursday to the staff. The column will run a couple of days per week.

“He’ll be breaking news, analyzing the fissures of a bank town under strain and how it goes forward, illuminating the characters behind Charlotte’s rise and fall and rise,” said Scott. A start date for the column has not yet been determined, but will be determined in the next couple of weeks.

Stodghill had been a writer for the Sunday business section at the Times until he left the paper in December 2007 to become editorial director of six magazines published by the Observer. Before that, he had been a senior editor at Fortune Small Business.

Stodghill graduated from the University of Missouri in 1986. He has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and worked at BusinessWeek from 1989 to 1997. He was the Time magazine Midwest bureau chief as well.

Stodghill is also the author of “Redbone: Money, Malice and Murder in Atlanta” (HarperCollins, 2007), and co-author of “No Free Ride,” former U.S. Congressman and NAACP president Kweisi Mfume’s best-selling memoir (Ballantine Books, 1996).

DISCLOSURE: Stodghill and I worked together at BusinessWeek from 1993 to 1994.

Nicole Garrison-Sprenger, a business reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, has resigned to become a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Commerce, according to a memo posted on MinnPost.com.

The memo, from senior business editor Doug Iverson, states, “Since joining the newspaper three years ago this week, Nicole has played a leading role in some of the newspaper’s highest profile work. The Ramsey Town Center series, awarded a national certificate of merit from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and the Denny Hecker coverage, recently highlighted by the Wall Street Journal, are just two examples.

“We knew Nicole had a lot of energy when she joined us. She came with a mile-long source list,  a catalogue of story ideas  and a deep understanding of the financial beat.  She soon showed us she was also a quick study who could jump in on a breaking story off her beat and still trounce the competition. Watching her work these past few years has been inspiring. Equally inspiring has been Nicole’s commitment to the profession, exemplified by her tenure as president of the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.”

Read more here. Her position apparently won’t be filled. Garrison-Sprenger had also spent three years at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.

Here is the memo sent to Dow Jones & Co. employees this morning from executive vice president Clare Hart and Todd Larsen, chief operating officer of the consumer media group, about the new “professional edition” of The Wall Street Journal.

“Today Dow Jones has achieved another milestone in the drive to provide the best global business news and information with the most innovative delivery to subscribers around the world.  The launch of The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition brings together two iconic Dow Jones brands — The Wall Street Journal Online and Dow Jones Factiva — that individually lead their market segments, but when combined offer even greater potential to capture new audiences and drive retention of existing clients. The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition points to a new equation for success, where the total opportunity is greater than the sum of the individual parts.  The launch enables us to expand our digital offerings and open up new revenue streams.

“It’s taken a talented team of professionals from across the company to envision and build this new product. When many companies are retrenching and waiting out the recession, Dow Jones has chosen to invest in new products and chart a new direction.

“The team was led by Daniel Bernard, chief product officer, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, vice president and managing director, Researcher & Knowledge Worker Solutions, Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor, online for The Wall Street Journal and Premal Parikh, director, application development for the Wall Street Journal Digital Network.  Among many other contributors, it included Darren McDermott, David Chivers, Ryan Warren, Ted Dickinson, Laura Holder, Brandon Whightsel, Sharon Denning, Raj Bahl, Doug Reiter, Fred Nix, Chris Boyd, Lee Cookson, Sarah Barnaby, Jim Skelly, John Costanzo, Norm Gorcys, Chris Nelligan, Pete Kostakis, Gene Hsiao, Klas Uden, Philip Fertick, Julia Mair and Millicent Holcomb.

“Designed specifically for business professionals, The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition allows subscribers to stay on top of the day’s news while also monitoring focused in-depth news and information about industries, companies, and people affecting their business. It builds on The Wall Street Journal Online’s intuitive design, enriching it with unique content and functionality, including: 

• Aggregated news and information from more than 17,000 leading global sources that deliver a comprehensive view of the business world
• Factiva SmartSearch^TM that provides powerful search capabilities on a one year archive of Factiva’s global business sources and a two year archive of wsj.com content 
• Six key industry sections that are continuously managed by The Wall Street Journal editors who select news and information from across Factiva’s vast archive: Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Energy, Media & Marketing, Telecommunications and Technology
• More than 30 industry specific pages, managed by a team of Dow Jones editors to deliver the most current insight and identify emerging trends
• Custom News that allows users to personalize their own home page to quickly surface the news they want on issues, companies, industries, or editor-chosen “deep dives”
• A permanent docking bar where subscribers can easily access their personalized industry pages, alerts, saved searches,  personalization options, shared content and more”

The product will be rolled out to U.S. consumers on Nov. 2. Until then, the company is asking Dow Jones employees to check out the product and provide feedback.

BusinessWeek editor Stephen Adler told the magazine’s staff Tuesday that he will step down from the top spot once the magazine’s sale to Bloomberg LP is completed in December.

The magazine’s Tom Lowry has posted Adler’s memo on a blog.

Lowry writes, “Adler’s resignation eliminates any question as to whether he would continue on under Bloomberg’s ownership and gives Bloomberg’s chief content officer, Norman Pearlstine, the opportunity to hand pick his own candidate for BusinessWeek’s top editorial job. Adler and Pearlstine, who will become chairman of BusinessWeek, were once colleagues at The Wall Street Journal. It is rare that the top editor of a magazine that is acquired stays on in that role.

“‘It was hugely important to me to help find the right owner for BusinessWeek and to work closely with our business-side colleagues to ensure that staffers would be provided appropriate benefits under any circumstances,’ Adler wrote in his staff memo. ‘Now that these goals have been accomplished, I’m considering other opportunities, and I believe it makes sense for a new owner to move forward with a new editor.’

“When Adler, 54, was recruited to BusinessWeek in late 2004, he was largely seen as a talented and ambitious editor itching to lead his own news organization. For years, Adler, a deputy managing editor at The Journal, was considered to be among the top candidates to become the newspaper’s managing editor. By coming to BusinessWeek, Adler had big shoes to fill, following Stephen Shepard who presided over BusinessWeek as its editor-in-chief for more than 20 years.

“But Adler continued to emphasize the journalistic mission of the magazine and BusinessWeek racked up more than 100 journalism awards during his tenure. In the past three years alone, BusinessWeek won 38 major awards, compared to seven at Fortune, one at Forbes and zero at the Economist. More recently, BusinessWeek won the General Excellence SABEW award (Society of American Business Editors and Writers) and its web site won for best in business.”

Read more here.

Shira Ovide of The Wall Street Journal reports that the business newspaper has passed USA Today in terms of weekday circulation and become the country’s No. 1 newspaper.

Ovide writes, “The Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp., has recently been the nation’s second-largest newspaper by circulation. Last year it reported circulation of just over two million weekday copies, based on the average for the six-month period ended September 2008. After USA Today’s memo, the Journal said it is now the largest U.S. newspaper by weekday circulation.

“USA Today, owned by Gannett Co., said it expects to report a decline in average weekday circulation of about 398,000 copies for the six months ended in September, compared with the six months ended September 2008. That would take circulation down to 1.9 million copies from 2.3 million, if measured by the most recent figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

“The paper has been hit by a slowdown in business travel, which diminishes its historic strength in copies sold to hotels. In a memo Friday to employees, Publisher David Hunke said he expects the paper’s circulation to rebound as the economy does.”

Read more here.

Irin Carmon of Women’s Wear Daily writes about the Financial Times‘ supplement “How to Spend It,” which is celebrating its 15th anniversary of publishing with a new Web site

Carmon writes, “Now the magazine has a new Web site, which goes live Saturday. As competitors like The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ. experiment with static online-only editions, and The New York Times’ T steadily ramps up its multimedia offerings at The Moment blog and on Twitter, How to Spend It will offer its own take on how to do luxury online.

“The magazine’s previous online presence was a three-year-old digital edition that was an unchanged representation of the magazine’s pages — now acknowledged as a model that lacks both the interactivity of the Web and the tactility of the page. Now, said editor Gillian de Bono, the emphasis is on ‘deconstructing and reinterpreting’ the magazine online.

“In an attempt to bring a fashion shoot to life, for example, the site will employ a three-dimensional tiled imaging system that allows the reader to move through different angles and zoom in. There will also be multimedia related to magazine content, including a video of an underwater fashion shoot at launch. Founding editor Lucia van der Postings will be blogging at ‘Van der Posts’ three times a week, alongside video bulletins from tech columnist Jonathan Margolis, daily posts from regular contributors at The Reconnoisseur blog, and a daily gift guide launching in November.”

Read more here.

Peter Kafka of All Things Digital reports that two well-known business journalists covering the media beat: Tim Arango of the New York Times and Jon Fine of BusinessWeek, are off the territory for the time being.

Kafka writes that Fine is taking a six-month sabbatical to travel the world. As for Arango, he writes, “I’ve heard that Arango is leaving for six months and that the Times doesn’t have plans to replace him while he’s out. But media editor Bruce Headlam, via email, says the paper is still figuring all of that out:

A lot is still up in the air -– When Tim might go and for how long. We do know that he will be coming back, however, and he’s a huge asset to our group so we’re looking for creative solutions in the meantime.

“Arango came to the Times after stints at Time Warner’s Fortune and News Corp.’s New York Post. I’ve asked him for comment -– for instance, I’d love to know why he wants to trade midtown office suites for the desert -– and will report back if I hear from him.”

Read more here.

Former BusinessWeek staffer Gary Weiss writes that the coverage of the sale of the weekly magazine has been contradictory in terms of whether there will be layoffs.

Weiss writes, “Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal said today that the layoff was ‘an option presented to bidders as a starting point to make the publication profitable again.’ The Journal said, ‘The cost-cutting plans included slashing about 25% of BusinessWeek’s editorial staff, mostly for support functions, according to the people familiar with the matter.’

“The Journal quoted a memo to employees by BW president Keith Fox, saying ‘Nothing is planned at this time, but business requirements, including resource needs, ultimately will be negotiated with any prospective buyer.’ So I guess the memo outlining the planned layoff didn’t mean what it said.

“I think the Times might want to either clarify or correct or reiterate its previous reporting.

“By the way, copy editing is hardly a ’support function,’ and I don’t understand the ‘people familiar with the matter’ attribution. This was first reported in the Times, for chrissakes.”

Read more here.