Magazines
New editor for BusinessWeek, from Time
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Nov 18, 2009 - 1:13:32 AM

Can Josh Tyrangiel revive BusinessWeek, succeeding where others have not?

Bloomberg, the title's new owner, is betting he can.

Tyrangiel, 37, has been hired way from Time magazine, where he's deputy managing editor, to be the new editor of the struggling weekly business title, succeeding Stephen Adler, who held the post for four years until resigning as the magazine was changing hands from McGraw-Hill to Bloomberg.

Tyrangiel starts his new job Dec. 3.

Unlike Adler, who came from The Wall Street Journal, Tyrangiel has no direct experience in business publishing. His background is in cultural news, chiefly music, having joined Time from Rolling Stone.

But that might be just the background for the revamped BusinessWeek Bloomberg has in mind under the direction of Norm Pearlstine, himself a former Time Inker as its onetime editorial director and before that managing editor of the Journal.

In a sharp departure, the new BusinessWeek will shift focus from its longtime base of business readers to appeal to a consumer readership. Tyrangiel tells today's New York Times that his job is to make the title "better, faster, smarter, more comprehensive" than the competition, chiefly Forbes and Fortune.

Tyrangiel's challenges would seem monumental.

He must create his new vision for the title while merging the two distinctly different cultures of McGraw-Hill and Bloomberg, all through the lens of his experience at Time Inc., whose culture is very unlike either of the other two.

And of course that must all be done as Bloomberg struggles with the issue of who of the remaining BusinessWeek staff stays and who goes. 

Bloomberg is reportedly planning to slash the staff by a quarter, some 100 positions in all.

And even then there's the bigger question of whether any remaking of BusinessWeek will succeed in bringing advertisers back into its pages.

The title has seen a huge ad drain in recent years, but then so too have all the traditional business titles, reflecting a shift of ad dollars to the internet and more general-interest titles.



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