businessweek - Gawker

explications

'Journal' Employees Screwed Whether Or Not Murdoch Buys Paper

There's an orgy of Murdochracy in today's Times. Richard Pérez-Peña and Louise Story report that, should Rupert Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones fail, layoffs at the Wall Street Journal are a near certainty. (Guess what? Same deal if he succeeds.) Perhaps aware of the impending cuts, editor Ellen Pollock has jumped to BusinessWeek, where she will become the Executive Editor and presumably keep an eye out for other talent ready to desert the rapidly sinking WSJ ship. Seeking to avoid Murdoch ownership, certain Dow Jones board members (including the Bancroft clan's Leslie Hill) are meeting with Ron Burkle to see if the grocery magnate can put together a rival bid. ("It is unclear what kind of offer, if any, Mr. Burkle would propose," reports the Journal, "but he has been exploring a structure for Dow Jones that would incorporate an employee stock-ownership plan, according to people close to him.") Finally, the Times talks to Andrew Neil, who swore up and down on Friday that the deal was done, and continues to swear up and down despite denials from both parties.

11:00 AM ON MON JUL 9 2007
BY BALK
396 views, 1 comment

Latest by DeliciousNoise: Hey wow, this has dragged on almost long enough to make it completely irrelevant. Like 80 blogs with better more »

nightmare interns

'BusinessWeek' MBA Student Still Has A Lot To Learn

Rachael Klein is a member of Georgetown's MBA class of 2008, and in her year of business school, she has learned quite a lot. "I am informed. In a few (and I mean a very few) cases, I am informed, more so than my PhD mother, MD father, and CPA grandfather. I know more about (a very few) certain things now than they do. I am pursuing information in a field that is beyond informed common knowledge." Congratulations, Rachael! But as she heads into her New York City ("the City") summer internship, there are a few areas in which, Rachael admits, her knowledge is still lacking. "Will my suit be the wrong color? Do East Coast professionals wear black in the summer? Do women wear bright colors to a bank? Are they going to ask me to figure out how to calculate arbitrage with bonds (something we learned but I need to "review," to say the least)? How do I prepare? Oh, and are white shoes a screaming faux pas?" We don't know about the white shoes, Rache, but being a pompous little know-it-all twit is generally frowned upon.

One Intern: Informed And Insecure [BusinessWeek]

3:14 PM ON FRI JUN 22 2007
BY EMILY
5,422 views, 52 comments

Latest by zibby: @jag56: You're right. These people should be ashamed of themselves. more »

Atoosa Rubenstein

Hello, Alpha Kitty!!

Today, BusinessWeek's Jon Fine takes a long, hard look at what a certain former Editor in Chief, a young woman named Atoosa Rubenstein, has been up to since leaving Seventeen. We already know, of course, that she's been spending a lot of time on MySpace. So what's her strategy for building the brand that will make her "the new Oprah?" Well, it's hard to say, exactly, but an important component of the plan seems to be . . . spending a lot of time on MySpace.

"What I want to do is gather my tribe"--yes, Rubenstein actually says things like this--"the ones reading Seventeen, and the ones who were, and grew out of it." This tribe is 13 to 30, female, thoroughly digital, and, in Rubenstein's view, lacking an "alpha kitty" addressing their concerns and sensibility.

But the 'Toos isn't the only kitty who's about to hit the big time: more »

11:10 AM ON FRI JAN 26 2007
BY EMILY
603 views, 21 comments

Latest by raincoaster: Young = >60? more »

Businessweek

BusinessWeek Will Get to the Bottom of This, You

Apparently immune to self-inflicted irony, BusinessWeek's online division has launched an Orwellian campaign to catch an internal leaker, while publishing a Halloween-themed article entitled "Scary Co-Workers." After all, "who hasn't indulged in the guilty pleasure of office scuttlebutt with a Gossip, or been marginally entertained by The Pessimist's conspiracy theories?" BW management has done neither, apparently. The personhunt has been launched to track down who leaked internal emails relating to speculation about the identity of a commenter ("Martin Smithers") who habitually and suspiciously praises the mag to the heavens. We hear that a "forensic audit" of emails has been ordered to figure out whence the leak sprung, and all IMs will now be surveilled. An even stranger rumor has boss Kathy Rebello hiring some sort of prose expert to compare the writing of employees versus that of the leaker, thus snaring the perpetrator in some kind of Da Vinci Code literary trap. Perhaps now is the time to report to the public square for a voluntary self-criticism session, before it becomes mandatory. more »

11:50 AM ON WED NOV 1 2006
BY CHRIS MOHNEY
116 views, 8 comments

Latest by raincoaster: genevieve, all you need to do is come to Vancouver when he's shooting something here (that would require him still more »

Businessweek

Crazy Eyes Entrepreneurah

When perusing BusinessWeek's "America's Best Young Entrepreneurs," you will find no Martin Smithers. However, you will encounter 25-year-old Noah Glass, who started GoMoBo, a company allowing you to place restaurant takeout orders via cellphone. That's all well and good, but just what is this guy on? He looks as though he emerged from his morning buttermilk bath, put on a scratchy new suit, popped out on his roof terrace, and unexpectedly beheld a stretch buffet of hot, willing poontang laid out and waiting. "Upsurge in business" indeed. more »

5:00 PM ON TUE OCT 31 2006
BY CHRIS MOHNEY
156 views, 14 comments

Latest by Stella Kevlar: I went to school with him too. He sang a cappella (is that not obvious from that face?) more »

Businessweek

BusinessWeek's "Martin Smithers": Sock Puppet, or Satirical Genius?

We hear that after a recent redesign of the story pages, the level of reader commentary at BusinessWeek's site has dropped precipitously, whether for technical or aesthetic reasons. This prompted exec editor Kathy Rebello to perform some field tests:

From: Rebello, Kathy
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 6:56 AM
To: Litscher, Ross; Meersschaert, Niels
Subject: RE: Reader Comments aren't working

more »

2:30 PM ON FRI OCT 27 2006
BY CHRIS MOHNEY
372 views, 10 comments

Businessweek

Everyone Knows Numbers On The Cover Move Magazines

Our tech industry expert over at Valleywag noted something interesting about BusinessWeek's recent cover story on Digg.com's Kevin Rose: The piece was "originally titled 'Wealth Punks,'... The magazine also considered the bland 'Geeks 2.0' for the cover before settling on 'How this kid made $60 million in 18 months.'" more »

12:34 PM ON MON AUG 7 2006
BY BALK
310 views, 6 comments

Softball

Media Softball: 'BizWeek' Is Better Than 'WSJ'

We missed this Friday because our email wasn't working quite right. (Today our web browser isn't working quite right. Fun!) But we know you don't want to be left behind on any details of media-softball season, so we must pass on news, even if a touch belatedly, that BusinessWeek pulled out a come-from-behind 9-8 victory over their rivals at The Wall Street Journal last week. So now you know who is clearly the superior source for business news. more »

11:33 AM ON TUE MAY 30 2006
88 views, Comment

Softball

Media Softball: 'High Times' Beats 'The Onion'; 'BizWeek' Beats 'Paris Review'

We've fallen behind in reporting on the fledging 2006 media-softball season, but we're determined to make it up to you. First, and most interestingly, High Times has graciously begun providing newsreel-style "Potcasts" of their games. We're duly impressed with the craftsmanship, but, even more than that, we're impressed with the thing's actual existence. We could never motivate to get something like that finished, even if we were sober. more »

10:30 AM ON MON MAY 8 2006
164 views, Comment

Softball

Media Softball Season, Now Puffing Along

The first media softball of the season arrived this morning: more »

Businessweek

Warning: Beware of the 'BusinessWeek' Copy Desk

Yesterday we brought you outraged memo from new BusinessWeek web honcho Charles DuBow, who is forced to suffer uppity copy editors who think they're entitled to rewrite his genius headlines. Today word arrives that perhaps DuBow ought to have a bit more respect for the copy desk, both because the editors there might help him and because otherwise they'll hurt him. How so? more »

5:45 PM ON THU APR 20 2006
630 views, 4 comments

Businessweek

Please Do Not Annoy, Torment, Pester, Molest, Badger, Harass, Heckle, Tease, or Copyedit the Bigshot New Editor

Nearly a month ago we reported that Charles DuBow, lifestyle editor at Forbes.com, was packing up his "wealth porn" and moving it over to BusinessWeek.com. Now he's there, and he's not happy. Know that Roger Franklin is the site's copy chief, then read: more »

4:11 PM ON WED APR 19 2006
470 views, 14 comments

Jobs

Motley to Leave Time Inc., Plus More Job-Hopping Fun

So many job changes have been crossing our desktop lately: more »

Jobs

Merry Christmas, Media Folks!

Oh, those media companies are really full of the Christmas spirit. more »

Media Bubble

Media Bubble: Also, Brian Williams Is Ready for His Closeup

• ABC's Vargas and Woodruff announcement, says Tina Brown, proves that Norma Desmond is still big, it's the networks that got small. [WP]
• Newspapers! Not in as bad shape as you think they are! (Not yet, at least.) [NYT]
• Last week, the Today show hit 10 straight years -- 520 weeks -- as the top-rated morning show. Which we're sure will somehow be construed as further evidence of Katie Couric's divaness. [NYT]
• BusinessWeek to shutter overseas editions. [NYT]

2:58 PM ON THU DEC 8 2005
39 views, Comment

Businessweek

'BizWeek' Gets a Little Bit Sexier

One column a week not enough to satiate your jones for Sexy Jon Fine, BusinessWeek's "Media Centric" writer? Today's your lucky day, then, as the mag launched this morning Fine's new blog, cleverly titled "Fine On Media." more »

5:34 PM ON WED OCT 12 2005
34 views, 1 comment

Media Bubble

Media Bubble: Readers Are Fools

• God bless Jack Shafer, who writes what most journalists know but don't say: That readers are two-faced nincompoops. [Slate]
• BusinessWeek gets hammered by new circ rules; other pubs likely to follow. [NYP]
• Natalee Holloway's Aruba disappearance is, while bad for Natalee, very, very good for Greta Van Susteren. [AP]
• Explaining the baby-mag boom. [Mediaweek]
• Esquire announces five-year-plus series on building the Freedom Tower. [NYT]
• More proof of Simon Dumenco's very strange fantasy life: An imagined Thanksgiving at the Murdochs'. [Ad Age]
• Mediabistro's Elizabeth Spiers doesn't like women's magazines. Also, she is friends with people who are friends with Christopher Hitchens. [mb]
• On the recently wrapped MTV reality show Miss Seventeen, 17 girls compete to win an internship from Atoosa. [WWD, second item]

2:45 PM ON MON AUG 8 2005
92 views

Softball

Softball: Causing Biz-Mag Staff Changes, Maybe

We received a press release an hour ago announcing that John Byrne, editor of Fast Company for the last two years, has left the magazine to join BusinessWeek. "This is the one job I could not turn down," Byrne said of his new gig in the FastCo-issued statement. "I have every confidence in Fast Company's editorial team and every confidence in the magazine's new owner to get the magazine to a new level of success." more »

6:53 PM ON MON JUL 18 2005
69 views