Five Million Dollars??

I was shocked this morning to find that Bloomberg has purchased Business Week magazine. Not shocked that they had bought it – it makes good sense and allows Bloomberg to leverage their reporting and data into a consumer market – but shocked that a brand like Business Week, one of the major magazines in America, would sell for only five million dollars.

If you want to think about how fast and far the media marketplace has shifted, think about that.

4 thoughts on “Five Million Dollars??”

  1. This is what happens when you hire Dr. Evil to be your lead negotiator…

    And take a pretty statist orientation to your business publication.

  2. The price tag includes assumption of liabilities, and McGraw-Hill was prepared to sell for “ONE DOLLAR.”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bd68cdc6-6fdc-11de-b835-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

    Thank God somebody bought it. Think of all the great business advice we’d be missing out on from these no-pot-to-piss-in financial geniuses.

    I’m starting to worry about everything I was already exposed to by reading BusinessWeek. What if – what if Cap and Trade isn’t going to lead to massive economic growth? What if cover photos of Barack Obama won’t cure plummeting circulation?

  3. The amazing thing to me is that no corporate Board has taken even a cursory interest in the connection between editorial quality/ stance, and declining value.

    Example after example shows MSM brand and value destruction, helped along by key trends to be sure but also decidedly self-inflicted. And the response of those who are supposed to be in charge and minding the store is… nothing.

    There are counter-examples of growing clue and improvement (Miami Herald comes to mind from personal experience). But on the whole, I don’t see many.

    If conservatives want media outlets that don’t just spout liberal platitudes and serve as an arm of the Democratic Party, their most effective option may be just to wait a bit, buy low, and create better models and products from the ashes. But then, that’s such a perfect alignment of justice that I’m inclined to suspect there’s something wrong with my analysis.

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