By Nick Shchetko

The announcement arrived on Sept. 19, 2013, but barely took the tech media industry by surprise. Rumors about a potential breakup of the long-term relationship between The Wall Street Journal’s owner, News Corp., and one of the most popular technology blogs, AllThingsD, had surfaced months in advance.

The breakup meant that the whole AllThingsD team, led by tech journalism superstars Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher, would be leaving the Journal in pursuit of a new venture. The move became the first link in a chain of several important announcements in technology journalism in the past year.

The tech news business has grown in significance over the years, along with the tech industry.

The information technology became so pervasive nowadays that literally no other industry can remain unaffected by the dramatic changes it facilitates. The influence of tech companies is huge, so as their value. The three out of five U.S. largest stocks by market capitalization are technology businesses: Apple, Google and Microsoft. Of these, Apple is the world’s most valuable company. With capitalization of roughly $510 billion, it leaves behind energy titans, industry giants and huge banks. The total value of technology stocks, $370 trillion, trumps everyone else but the financial sector. The next closest industry – raw materials – is roughly two times smaller.

In the informational era, it comes as no surprise that the media is at the forefront of both the changes technology brings and the coverage of these changes.

“Every technology company is a media company, and therefore every media company should be invested in or understand technology,” said David Cohn, the chief content officer at Circa, a mobile news startup.

During the last couple of years a number of large media companies beefed up their tech coverage by expanding tech beat desks or launching new ventures aimed at this market.

“Tech is part of most things, or will be soon, so journalists need to understand what that means,” said Dan Gillmor, a digital media expert.

“I don’t think a “tech reporter” is necessary for all niches. However, all journalists should have some training in learning how to use new tools,” said Gillmor, who teaches Digital Media Literacy and Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Arizona State University.

While literally every media outlet reports on the technological matters these days, there is a several dozen of English-language publications, primarily U.S.-based, that set the tone.

A large publication can barely remain relevant to its readers without professional journalists who could analyze the newest announcements from technology companies and explain their meaning an importance to wider audiences. That’s why tech desks at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg News and several other large publications are sizable, and their headcounts keep growing.

Another group of media tone-setters is composed of a several dozen digitally native tech blogs that cover tech in all of its diversity. This group includes, most notably, TechCrunch, The Verge, Engadget, Ars Technica, CNET, Re/code (formerly AllThingsD), GigaOM and other similar outlets.

Finally, the picture of the general tech media landscape wouldn’t be complete without a vast number of personal blogs and relatively small shops that often focus on specific technology facets, such as search engines, digital security or company-specific news. These organizations or individuals often provide in-depth analysis and put news in the context of their field of interest.

This media landscape has been like that for about a decade, but recent trends in journalism have also affected tech media and introduced changes. The rise of the social media, most notably Twitter, transformed prominent journalists into media outlets of their own. “Writers with large followings are less tied to where they work at as a result. There’s more mobility,” said Gabe Rivera, founder of TechMeme, the site that aggregates the most important tech news from all across the web.

The big upheaval

In the beginning of 2014, several massive tech journalism projects started, and most of them revolved around journalist superstars.

Walt Mossberg, his business partner Kara Swisher and AllThingsD staff parted ways with the Journal to introduce Re/Code, a new tech news venture, launched in partnership with NBC. The Journal relaunched its own tech desk under WSJD brand and went on a hiring spree to expand its tech coverage. The latest talent acquisition Christopher Mims, a Quartz tech editor, will become the personal technology columnist to succeed Farhad Manjoo, who recently left the Journal for the New York Times.

The Times lost its tech talent, too. David Pogue, its personal technology columnist, joined Yahoo to start Yahoo Tech, heavily consumer-focused tech news site.

New media organizations that do not necessarily focus on tech, pay significant attention to the beat from day one. Vox.com, a new project of the renowned Washington Post’s journalist Ezra Klein, runs several high-caliber tech-related stories a day, tailored, however, not to industry professionals, but to the general public.

So does such variety mean the high – and growing – demand, or it just further fragments the market that may well be already overly saturated?

With regard to saturation, a media critic and New York University professor Jay Rosen said that one can “never sure of that” and suggests that maybe “the site we really want hasn’t been born yet.”

Gillmor points to the high “noise level” in tech journalism nowadays. “There’s been a surplus of tech journalism for some time, if what we mean by tech journalism is shallow reporting of small announcements and mini “scoops” about things that only a few people care about,” he said.

On the bright side, “we’re seeing deeper reporting than before, too, with some terrific journalism going on at Yahoo Tech, Re/Code and others,” Gillmor said.

The natural selection will eventually put the things in perspective. Tech media, often a preferred read of younger and more affluent audiences, enjoy close attention from advertisers.

“Are there more [tech] sites than the advertising market can support in the long run? Maybe, but if so we’ll find out soon enough when some disappear,” said Gillmor.

Paywall, or not to paywall

Advertising is not the only way of funding journalism these days. Jessica Lessin left the Wall Street Journal in the Summer of 2013 to found her own tech publication, The Information. The subscription-supported publication at $399 a year is more expensive than the Journal ($348). Lessin thinks that the price tag is justified: “We know the audience we want to go after – they’re professionals inside and outside of tech, an audience that pays for information that’s going to make them smarter and give them an edge and to be ahead of the curve,” she said in an interview.

“We know the audience we want to go after — they’re professionals inside and outside of tech, an audience that pays for information that’s going to make them smarter and give them an edge and to be ahead of the curve.”

It is “very much serving the business and industry, they’re like trying to be the Wall Street Journal … for the people in the know, the business leaders of the tech industry,” said Cohn.

“It is not there for consumers,” he added.

The question about the sustainability of the hard paywall strategy in the long run still lingers. But most of tech blogs and tech-specific publications remain free of charge for their readers. But publications may compile specific market research and analysis reports, based on carefully gathered and curated data that no one else provides, and charge a lot for the access to it. Business Insider’s BI Intelligence arm or Gigaom Research would be great examples of the approach.

And then there are conferences, of course

In the recent years, numerous tech websites went offline by hosting conferences that bring together thought leaders and executives from the tech industry. Tangible and intangible gains from these events turned out to be so significant that the large tech sites put a lot of time and effort into organizing and promoting these events. TechCrunch Disrupt, Wired Business Conference, Gigaom Structure, WSJDLive, Engadget Expand, Re/code’s Code Conference… – and that’s not nearly a full list.

The trend was set by Mossberg and Swisher, though it probably was an exception that proved the rule. The wildly popular tech conference they started doing for the Wall Street Journal in 2003, D: All Things Digital Conference in 2003, eventually gave birth to AllThingsD project in 2007. Nowadays it generally goes in the opposite direction: big tech sites are giving birth to massive conferences.

“The economics of live are better than the economics of ads, so I would expect the conferences to continue,” said Rosen. “Now we have to make them good. First step: if you’re a sponsor, doesn’t mean you get to talk,” he said.

Cohn agrees that the tech media-run conferences are financially justified. He is also not opposed to the idea, but highlights that this business may raise some eyebrows: “conferences are for, usually, the tech industry itself. So they [tech sites] sort of hosting a tech industry conference and charging and making money and sort of doing the thing, and then the next day they turn around and cover the tech industry.”

“It’d be as if, you know, the politics editors at the New York Times or at Washington Post had a conference for politicians … it’s very different,” he said. “For some reason we accept that for technology journalism organizations, tech sites to organize tech conferences for the tech industry,” said Cohn.

“I’m not trying to imply that it’s not justified or that anything bad is necessarily happening as a result of it, but I do think it’s kind of interesting nuanced relationship,” Cohn said. He noted that even much small media-backed pitching conferences that bring together venture capitalists and startup founders “are great for that [startups getting their opportunity to pitch], so it’s good for them, and again, it’s good for the site that organizes those.”

Major conferences charge hefty fees for access. Mossberg and Swisher’s new conference, The Code Conference, that starts in late May, is now sold out (registration fee – $6,500). There are still some spots for the WSJDLive conference in late October, at $5,000. Both events feature panels and speeches from the top tech companies’ executives, such as Google, Alibaba, Twitter, Apple and more.

But will these revenue sources remain sustainable in the long run for the new outlets? May well be, at least for some of them.

“I do believe Re/Code will do just fine financially, because its revenues are based largely on conferences that made AllThingsD profitable in the past,” said Rivera.

The new tech ventures with huge organizations behind their backs, such as the Wall Street Journal and Yahoo, would definitely do fine, but for smaller independent media it may not be necessarily the case. In the long run, the ones that provide readers with what they want would win.

It’s hard to estimate audience size and financial situation of the most tech media outlets, but thanks to TechMeme’s Leaderboard it’s possible to roughly evaluate how many scoops they deliver. It certainly has its limitations, but that’s the best tool publicly available. If we look at the data from the last 7 years, the ranking of tech news sources by their “Techmeme presence” will look like this:

1. TechCrunch – 139.49%[i]
2. Re/Code (formerly AllThingsD) – 56.44%
3. Engadget – 44.85%
4. The Next Web – 39.90%
5. The Verge – 39.22%
6. CNET – 38.42%
7. The New York Times – 37.62%
8. The Wall Street Journal – 35,91%
9. Reuters – 33,82%
10. GigaOM – 31,92%

It is interesting that TechCrunch has been the clear leader since the very inception of the leaderboard in October 2007. AllThingsD started to gain momentum in late 2010; so has the Wall Street Journal. CNET’s performance, however, slightly degraded over the years.

The Verge, arrived in 2011, became an instant hit – it ranked high overall even though it was not in the game for as long as most of the other outlets on the Top-10. The same is true for The Next Web – the project materialized in 2009.

This year, the most prominent players were TechCrunch (the clear number one), Re/code, The Journal and The Verge – these resources dominated top positions of the leaderboard.

Among the fresh cohort of tech sites, the “old-new” Re/code is definitely going strong. “I think they’re doing fantastic,” Cohn said. “They’ve proven themselves obviously with AllThingsD, and they’re doing it again with Re/Code … I think they’re doing a great job.”

Setting new media outlets aside, what’s next for the tech journalism? The audiences’ interest in technology matters will likely continue to grow, fueling the demand for better and more diverse tech reporting. But in many ways the coverage is probably going to be more focused and less broad, unless we’re talking about bigger media outlets catering to general audiences.

“General tech coverage, or broad tech coverage, at a certain point has diminishing returns,” said Cohn. “I do think that the most successful tech sites are not gonna be generalists, there’s only so many general tech sites that you really have or need or can win, right, I do think there gonna be more specialists.”

On the other hand, as the technology continues to reach out into multiple industries, the whole meaning of “technology” would broaden, and mainstream media has to react.

“So should every media outlet have a tech reporter? To some degree, yes. Even if you’re the Chronicle of Higher Education, technology is impacting education, right?” said Cohn.

Rivera also notes that “more mainstream/established publications are hiring tech writers.” His company’s example perfectly illustrates the “evolution” of tech industry.

TechMeme started as a company focused on the issues mostly tech bloggers were concerned with, but the convergence eventually exposed it to larger audiences and broader coverage. “Lines were too blurry for us to address an area any narrower than what we cover now: both hardware and software, both web and native applications, both enterprise and consumer, both people and products, and both commercial aspects and core technologies”, said Rivera in an interview to Business Insider.

Still, it’ll be a challenge for tech media outlets to serve both the industry and the general audience. “That which serves the industry and that which serves the public are, I think, heading for a split. That is what I would watch for in tech journalism,” said Rosen.

Shchetko is a master’s student at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication who will intern with the technology news desk of The Wall Street Journal in San Francisco this summer.

By Alex Dixon

Cutting staff has been a common trend for newspapers during the last several years. And business desks at newspapers aren’t exempt.

In 2010, The Washington Post cut its standalone business section, so did The Miami Herald. More recently, in 2013, the Cleveland Plain Dealer did, too.

But some newspaper editors and reporters are bucking the trend, expanding business news coverage or even starting business news publications of their own.

The city or the publication?

Most mornings Greg Gilligan checks the Richmond Biz Sense site.

Gilligan, the business editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is one of Richmond Biz Sense’s biggest competitors.

“I think competition is good. It keeps us on our toes,” Gilligan says. “We have far greater distribution both print and online. We scoop them a lot and they scoop us sometimes.”

And while both publications report on business news, each has found a niche to fill in the Richmond, Va. market.

Aaron Kremer, who founded Richmond Biz Sense in 2008, says his site mainly caters toward local business owners and employees.

“You want to reach 140,000, then you pitch (Richmond Times-Dispatch) your story,” Kremer says. “If you want to reach 15,000 movers and shakers, that’s us.”

Biz Sense doesn’t even bother with the big companies.

“We like local companies,” Kremer says. “We don’t report on big companies. There’s not much to say about them.”

Gilligan cites a “fairly significant business community” in Richmond, with headquarters of several Fortune 500 companies, for the Times-Dispatch expansion of business coverage.

In 2008, the Times-Dispatch had a business section tucked inside the metro section. In 2010, Gilligan was named the business editor. And in 2011, the paper brought back a standalone section Tuesday through Saturday with one full page of stock information.

In Houston, Texas, things aren’t much different.

When Nancy Barnes came in at the end of 2013 as editor of the Houston Chronicle, expanding business coverage was a main priority.

Laura Goldberg, business editor of the Chronicle, says the paper is currently filling positions for a banking and financial reporter, an investigative reporter to focus on energy companies, and a reporter to focus on big public companies.

Goldberg says there are a significant amount of Fortune 500 companies in Houston and an “appetite for business news among readers across all platforms.”

And the Chronicle certainly has competition in Houston as it expands, with the Houston Business Journal, various trade publications covering energy companies, and with Reuters, The New York Times, Bloomberg and AP with bases there.

Julie Doll, business editor of the Wichita Eagle, said the Wichita Business Journal is physically across the street. She said this provides “healthy competition” on breaking news and on how and what the Eagle covers.

But while some markets are saturated with business coverage, Kremer said not every area is fit for these outlets.

“There’s a bunch of factors,” he said. “First, you have to have a flow of interesting business news.”

For example, he said a market scope of specifically Chapel Hill, N.C., is too small for a business publication, whereas a business publication covering all of New York would be too big.

Bringing in Revenue

Doll says expansion of business sections has a high potential for probability.

In September 2006, the Eagle expanded from about a page to two pages every day and to an eight-page section on Thursdays.

“The business community has been real supportive of publications and news,” Doll said.

It traces back to the roots these Wichita, Kan., businesses had in advertising with papers she said, some back as far as 100 years.

And she said it’s about mutual support. For example, the Eagle posts a job section on its website to help Wichita businesses find employees.

Gilligan says that three-to-four days per week, the Times-Dispatch runs a two column, full-page ad to support the standalone section.

And while businesses’ print advertising may help support the business sections, Gilligan and Doll said the advertising does not influence the content in any way.

While Biz Sense has no revenue from print advertising, it has diversified its sources through online ads, emails, and even community events.

Biz Sense runs a Daily Newsfeed, which is a daily email sent out to 13,000 subscribers, which Kremer says brings in a lot of advertising revenue.

Biz Sense also hosts community events, such as “Kitchen Confidential,” a panel discussion with some of the most popular restaurateurs in Richmond.

Kremer said the events are lucrative.

Kremer said in a Talking Biz News article that this is where Biz Sense sees the biggest growth, in the form of selling sponsorship to these events.

“We use our news instincts to dream up topics we know will hook our audience,” Kremer said in the article. “Then we tell the story live on stage.”

Cutting Back

Gilligan said he thinks not prioritizing business coverage is foolhardy.

The two key things the public needs to know about are government and business, Gilligan said.

Kremer says the business beat is not a loved beat for daily papers.

“Sports and cops are the main strengths,” Kremer says. “Business is not their bread and butter.”

According to Show Me the Money by Chris Roush, just 38 percent of news executives say that business is a high priority in their newsrooms.

And when it comes time to prioritize, many newspapers aren’t looking at the business desks.

In an article by Mitch Leff, president of Leff & Associates Public Relations, he writes “The recession decimated media companies. Staffs were slashed…in many cities the once-separated business section has been folded into other sections.”

An article on Talking Biz News said that more than 250 business journalists lost their jobs due to media closings, layoffs or newsroom buyouts in the first six months of 2009.

Other Platforms

While the business cutbacks in 2009 may have been correlated with cutbacks in all newspaper sections, many papers are slow to refocus business coverage.

However, papers that once cut standalone sections are beginning to bring them back as the economy recovers.

The Baltimore Sun brought back its standalone section in 2010 and The Columbus Dispatch and Idaho Statesmen did in 2013.

In a column on the The Columbian’s site, former business editor Courtney Sherwood wrote, “With so much uncertainty about the economy, business news is as important as it has ever been.”

Even though the paper, based in Vancouver, Wash., has had to fold in the standalone section on most days, she wrote that the reporting quality is still the same.

And business coverage cutbacks in print may lead to more opportunities on other platforms.

The Columbian launched a blog called Strictly Business, with “details from reporters’ notebooks and thoughts about how national headlines may reflect on us here,” according to Sherwood.

In Savannah, The Savannah Morning News launched a tabloid with a separate website and Twitter feed, called Business in Savannah.

The publication features profiles of businesses and stories on business-related concerns as opposed to investigative pieces or breaking business news.

The Reader

For many publications, the average business-news reader isn’t the average newspaper reader.

Doll said Wichita has a community built on “entrepreneurship and small business,” and that the business news is structured more as a business-to-business section.

Kremer said local business people need what papers write and business desks don’t always write with that in mind.

Gilligan said the Times-Dispatch has kept one full page of stock information in order to cater to the readers who like to view this.

Gilligan said it’s a juggling act on determining business coverage on a local, national and international level but it is important to provide readers with local content. Around 70 percent of coverage is local at the Times-Dispatch, Gilligan said.

Kremer said he enjoys when he calls someone from a local business for coverage and they are already familiar with Biz Sense as a reader.

“People love to tell their stories, and they love to see themselves,” Kremer said.

Dixon is a business journalism student at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication

By Sarah Chaney

When Bloomberg LP bought the McGraw-Hill-owned BusinessWeek in 2009, the publication was flailing in turbulent waters.

Stephen Shephard, who left BusinessWeek as editor-in-chief in March 2005, said the magazine started falling off a cliff under Stephen Adler, who served as editor-in-chief from 2005 until the Bloomberg takeover in 2009.

“They started losing money for the first time since it started up,” Shephard said. “It went from one of the most powerful magazines around to a magazine hemorrhaging money, and they essentially gave it away to Bloomberg.”

Though the 2008 financial implosion had business consequences, Mark Vamos, a former senior editor at BusinessWeek, said it was the magazine’s editorial content that had hit rock bottom.

Many believe the magazine is still losing money, as well as compromising its former values in order to reach a younger age cohort, but current Bloomberg Businessweek editors say its editorial content, told through a prism of commercial activity, has improved.

The capabilities a financial media company has in churning out more illuminating and educational articles might counteract the numerous challenges of integrating the terminal and magazine.

“There’s more of the expectation that people have to be comfortable with financial information and continually work to mine the data that’s in there,” said Bloomberg Businessweek Director of Special Projects Cristina Lindblad.

“My Bloomberg colleagues are good at using and finding supporting data.”

Looking Back to See How It Looked Forward

Though it had added columnists such as Maria Bartiromo and Jack Welch to increase corporate coverage, BusinessWeek began to lose its hard-hitting stories during Adler’s term.

And while editorial content tried to find its footing, the business side of BusinessWeek decayed.

According to a Wall Street Journal article published in October 2009, BusinessWeek lost $43 million in 2008, including money allocated for rent and other infrastructure shared with McGraw-Hill.

Bloomberg agreed to pay nearly $5 million and take responsibility for more than $10 million in liabilities, according to the Journal article.

Joseph Weber, former reporter and chief of correspondents for BusinessWeek, speculated Bloomberg was attracted by this financial bargain.

“The Bloomberg folks thought there was a logical fit there,” he said. “It made a lot of sense to have Bloomberg reporting network feeding the magazine. There was a lot of synergy there.”

Bloomberg’s management team knew the magazine needed to change, and Josh Tyrangiel, current editor of the magazine, had ideas for how to push the magazine in a new direction.

While other magazines have cut back on frequency, Bloomberg Businessweek continues to publish approximately 50 issues per year. In 2014, it will publish 49 issues.

The overhaul also resulted in a sharp increase in the number of pages per magazine, with some issues such as the November 2013 “The Year Ahead: 2014” edition breaking the staples.

The magazine has added 20 percent more editorial pages and doubled the number of stories to deliver more value to its audience since 2009.

“When readers pick up a copy of Bloomberg Businessweek, they now get the sense they’re getting what they paid for,” said Rachel Nagler, communications director for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Lindblad said this decision was based on the magazine’s weakening financial state.

“When we were acquired, we were still losing money, so we decided to maintain a certain size of the book,” Lindblad said. “It’s packed with a lot more calories.”

There is a perception that Bloomberg Businessweek is still losing money, but Nagler said statements about the profitability of the magazine are not publicly available.

As part of the larger Bloomberg enterprise, the magazine is more than just a large collection of pages. Paul Barrett, a senior writer and assistant managing editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, said the magazine provides an outlet for Bloomberg news material.

“That apparently is of considerable value to the man whose name was on the door (Bloomberg),” he said. “I’ve heard him say in meetings that he thinks the magazine, both print and web, helped sell the terminal.”

The terminal is the main source of revenue for the larger company and what drives the livelihood of Businessweek.

“If you stripped it away from everything else, the magazine in all likelihood would have gone away many years ago,” Barrett said.

“Mass circulation magazines will go away in a few years unless they find some new configuration, some other version of what has happened with Businessweek. The old equation of the ad revenue minus what is going out doesn’t work anymore.”

Turnover Has Some Turning Over

With the purchase of the magazine in 2009 came the loss of jobs for a quarter of BusinessWeek’s editorial staff. Some were fired, and some chose to leave.

“It’s not like this is all sweetness and light,” Barrett said. “The simplest example is the guy Steve Adler who was out the door because of the change in ownership of the magazine.”

Weber said the consolidation, though a money-saving measure, has ultimately hurt the content of the magazine.

“From the Bloomberg perspective, that may have made some sense to them,” Weber said.

“They figured they had their own reporters. They didn’t need to have a large staff of relatively high-paid people. I think the product would have been better today if they had kept some of the former BusinessWeek people.”

Fun and Feature-y

After a couple years into Adler’s stint, BusinessWeek cut back on its publication of sports, lifestyle and politics articles, instead focusing on writing from a businessperson’s point-of-view.

Today’s Businessweek is aimed at churning out entertaining articles and accompanying imagery, which a quick flip through the magazine will reveal. Glasses of whiskey, Shaquille O’Neal with a contorted facial expression and an elaborate photo illustration of the Twitter bird icon are all examples of recent Businessweek feature images.

“It is much livelier, it is more irreverent, it is more entertaining in a broad sense,” said Barrett.

“Not that every single article is a laugh riot. We just hope people get kind of a kick out of it and say, ‘That was a fun, lively experience.’”

Weber said among other characteristics such as solid content and a deep understanding of corporate culture, a good business magazine needs a bit of humor.

“It’s got to have a light touch, some personality, some sections that are dessert,” he said.

Lindblad said she thinks this new approach to writing gives reporters more of a voice in their stories than in the past.

“We’re more entertaining than we used to be. We used to be more preachy.

“The feature tone is completely different,” she said. “We do much more narrative stories than we used to. They’re more upbeat — but some people have said they’re not about business.”

Grumpy Editor blog’s Hal Morris is one such individual. In an email, Morris said the magazine’s writers and editors need to keep in mind that the title of the publication is Businessweek.

“Sometimes its editors forget that, as a weekly, it should recap, amplify or update business events of the week,” he wrote. “Some stories have nothing to do with business/finance.”

But one of Bloomberg Businessweek’s goals is to rope in a broad audience — or at least a readership more diverse than the businesspeople Adler aimed to reach.

Lindblad said lifestyle stories draw in a wider audience and have allowed the magazine to reach women, a demographic historically underrepresented in the magazine’s readership circle.

“We have stories about clothes and makeup and shoes,” she said. “Our goal is not to be an elite product, but to reach people. If we’re pulling you in, then good for us.”

The ‘Old Days’

Bloomberg Businessweek is a widely acclaimed magazine.

Jack Shafer of Reuters called Bloomberg Businessweek “the best magazine in America.” Columbia Journalism Review’s Ryan Chittum wrote, “Tyrangiel has in a very short time turned Businessweek into far and away the best read of any business publication.” And Walter Isaacson, author of the best-selling biography of Steve Jobs, called the magazine’s Jobs memorial issue “the best issue of any kind produced in the past five years.”

Despite praise from media peers, Bloomberg Businessweek might in some ways lag behind its predecessor.

Weber said Bloomberg Businessweek has certain areas that just don’t stack up to the McGraw-Hill-owned version of the publication.

“I think when they set out to do their big projects, like cover stories, they are every bit as good as the stuff we produced in the old days,” he said.

“I think that the more day-to-day and week-to-week stuff, a lot of it I just don’t find terribly interesting.”

Part of BusinessWeek’s staff turnover upon its acquisition in 2009 resulted in a new kind of writing influence on the magazine.

Weber said that while Bloomberg is a top-notch deliverer of financial news, its writers tend to carry over their wire service writing style into the magazine content.

“They have to look up from their terminals and realize a magazine story is not the same as a terminal story,” Weber said.

“They have a fair number of wire service reporters and magazine editors who are editing it. They have this short, clippy, just not as elegant of an approach.”

But Lindblad said she thinks the collaborative effort is successful, as the data-driven capabilities of wire service reporters meshes nicely with the expertise of the magazine editors.

“In some cases we will take stories that appeared on the terminal and editors will try to shape them more into magazine pieces,” she said.

“If they’re writing something for us, they can turn it into a magazine piece.”

Barrett agreed that Bloomberg Businessweek’s model is grounded in a strategy that works.

“That just shows you that there are a lot of instruments in the orchestra and a lot of ways to play the instruments,” he said. “I think that was the whole idea that the Bloomberg people had when they bought the magazine.”

Nagler said among its many awards, Bloomberg Businessweek received the 2014 SABEW Best in Business Award for Magazines.

However, Weber said the Businessweek of today hasn’t racked up nearly as many accolades as the publication did during his tenure.

One of the problems plaguing Bloomberg Businessweek might be the emphasis on verticals, he said.

“We had a concept that everything had to be horizontal, meaning that you wanted to reach people in many different areas of business,” Weber said.

“If you were writing about a drug manufacturer, it should be interesting to people in an accounting firm. They have too many vertical stories, which are interesting to people who have one area of interest.”

Still, Lindblad thinks Bloomberg Businessweek is grabbing hold of not only a larger audience, but a larger source pool.

“I think trying to reach more people in the sense that you’re reaching a bigger audience means more people will be willing to open doors to you,” Lindblad said.

“Before there was a certain category of executives who would speak to a business news reporter. Now that you have Businessweek and online, it makes it more attractive to some people.”

Scandalous or ‘Just for Fun?’

From images of a man with arrows jutting out of his belt to two airplanes “getting it on,” Bloomberg Businessweek has turned out some sexually obtrusive and controversial covers.

These edgy designs are part of an effort to attract a younger age group and surprise and engage more readers.

Weber said he thinks the covers are tarnishing Businessweek’s reputation, though he hasn’t noticed any recent covers that emit sexual messages.

“I think some of the sexually suggestive covers are an embarrassment,” he said. “They try to get edgy and get noticed.”

Lindblad said the covers are creating buzz and not based on the intent to shock but to humor.

“We have a very edgy design team that has made us look very different from our peers,” she said. “We’re trying to appeal to a new demographic. It’s a worthwhile gamble for us.”

Richard Turley, the creative director at Bloomberg Businessweek responsible for many of the controversial covers, recently left for a job at MTV.

Morris said Businessweek is competing with other news outlets such as Fast Company to garner younger readers’ interest, although the current Fast Company issue spotlights Chelsea Clinton on the cover with the line: “She’s Got Power, Influence, and a Plan to Change the World.”

Nonetheless, the covers and design of Bloomberg Businessweek have achieved acclaim for pushing the boundaries of traditional newsweekly and business magazine design.

In 2012, Bloomberg Businessweek received the Magazine of the Year award from the Society of Professional Designers, Creative Review’s 2012 Studio of the Year Award and was Magpile’s Best Magazine Design winner for 2013.

From ‘W’ to ‘w’

When Bloomberg bought BusinessWeek, the uppercase ‘W’ became lowercase. The change did not only signify the shift in ownership, but a change in initiative and a growing need to adapt to the Internet age.

“It’s hard to compare one magazine to another because it’s not the same era,” Shephard said.

“They have been very smart about adapting to a new world. I think they’re still losing money, but I don’t think they’re losing as much as they were in 2008.”

The trend toward digital operations began under Shephard himself.

“One of the things that had happened at the magazine during the time under the stewardship of Steve Shephard, the editors really recognized how important technology would be,” Vamos said.

The definition of a good business magazine has subsequently changed with the times.

“At the time — during BusinessWeek’s heyday (which I was part of), it was being comprehensive that made for a good magazine,” Vamos said. “BusinessWeek could cover very broadly the world of business — everything from technology to industry to finance to the moon.

“What makes for a great magazine now, it has much more to do with a sharper focus, a voice…it’s a very different game.”

But even though comparing the McGraw-Hill version of the magazine to the Bloomberg version might be akin to comparing apples and oranges, there is reason to think the magazine has improved.

According to Alliance for Audited Media statements, circulation is up 8 percent to 989,000. This has been driven by individually paid subscriptions, which are up more than 40 percent. Average price paid by subscribers has also risen to the highest rate in 10 years.

“Has Businessweek improved? 100 percent yes,” Lindblad said. “It’s a completely different magazine, but it’s one that people are more likely to read.”

Chaney is a business journalism student at UNC-Chapel Hill. She will intern this summer at the Triangle Business Journal.