Many once-mighty forces in journalism and media are rapidly declining. Few demonstrate this better than today's news that Bloomberg has acquired BusinessWeek for less than $5 million.
The business periodical, founded in 1929, has been seeking a new owner for several months now. Its current one, McGraw-Hill, has been eager to exchange BusinessWeek's declining circulation and liabilities since July of this year.
After some bidding between potential buyers, the business news conglomerate Bloomberg has come out on top. The price, according to BusinessWeek funny enough, is between $2 and $5 million.
While details are still coming in on the deal, we do know that Bloomberg intends to use the BusinessWeek brand to reach out to a wider array of business executives and government officials in an effort to make new inroads in the consumer realm. The BusinessWeek logo will be changed to incorporate the Bloomberg brand in some way.
While we believe BusinessWeek will be in good hands with Bloomberg and could even stage a comeback, it's still a sad day for the once-venerable print industry. The web has systematically taken out core components of its business and revenue by providing a more efficient method of news distribution. For such a well-known and long-lasting brand to be sold for essentially peanuts is a powerful indication of what is happening to the entire print industry.