Josh Tyrangiel, who was an heir apparent at Time magazine, has been appointed the editor of BusinessWeek, its new owner, Bloomberg L.P., announced Tuesday morning.
Time.com Josh TyrangielMr. Tyrangiel, 37, is currently the deputy managing editor of Time, where he oversees its Web site. He had been a rising star at Time Inc., starting as Time’s music critic before being promoted to oversee Time.com in 2006.
Norman Pearlstine, Bloomberg’s chief content officer and the former editor-in-chief of Time Inc., is overseeing Bloomberg’s acquisition of BusinessWeek. He has been leaning on old hands from Time Inc. to advise him on the integration, including Jim Kelly, the former Time editor and Mr. Tyrangiel’s former boss. The appointment of Mr. Tyrangiel suggests Mr. Pearlstine does not want to radically depart from the traditional magazine formula with BusinessWeek.
Interestingly, Mr. Tyrangiel does not have a strong business background. He worked at the music magazines Vibe and Rolling Stone before joining Time as a music critic. Though he helps direct some of the magazine’s business coverage now, Time has never been known as a business-journalism powerhouse.
BusinessWeek is a bit of a strange fit at Bloomberg, where editorial has been geared toward wire-service stories and there has been little room for long-form content. As BusinessWeek employees were interviewed for Bloomberg BusinessWeek jobs, they were asked to write essays about their careers and where they saw the magazine going — in 250 words. Further signaling its strange fit, while Mr. Pearlstine and Matthew Winkler, the longtime Bloomberg News boss, both report to president Dan Doctoroff, that structure is muddled with BusinessWeek. On that title, Mr. Pearlstine will be chairman, but will report through Mr. Winkler. Meanwhile, it is unclear where BusinessWeek.com staff will report, as Andrew Lack oversees the multimedia operations, including Web sites.
In recent interviews, Mr. Pearlstine provided a few details about where he saw BusinessWeek going: it would remain a weekly, expand global coverage, increase analysis, and get some cash for better paper stock and snazzier design, among other things.
Bloomberg L.P., meanwhile, wants to use the magazine to access consumers — rather than just its terminal subscribers — and, more importantly, high-level decision-makers.
The culture clash between Bloombergians and BusinessWeek staff will be interesting to watch. Bloomberg tracks when its employees come and go, monitors whether employees are at their terminals and has all of its writers make their calendars accessible to anyone in the building. Bloomberg says it makes it easier to find people, but employees say they can feel constantly monitored. And instead of an easygoing magazine culture, where editorial meetings are rarely held before 10 a.m. because no one would show up, Bloomberg News staff begin arriving before 6 a.m., and there’s a long line to get into the elevators by 8 a.m. The elevator only stops on a couple floors of the building, making staffers crowd through open areas and onto escalators to get to their floor, creating a sense of activity and intensity.
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