Every time some corporate soothsayer spells doom for magazines, there will be few crusaders who will decide to hold the bull by the horns and do something remarkable to turn the tables. President Paul Bascobert and Editor Josh Tyrangiel of Bloomberg Businessweek are two such gentlemen, who are out on a mission to redefine the rules of business journalism. Seeing is believing they say, pick up the latest copy of Bloomberg Businessweek and you'll understand what I mean. There's something special going on in there......... inside the editorial camp.
According to Josh, a man who understands web like back of his hand ( earlier stint was with TIME.COM), "web is only good for grazing and where magazines have got it wrong in the recent past is in their approach of doing tiny short webby stories and headlines. They have completely forgotten the fact that when a reader decides to open the magazine, he actually wants to shut out the rest of the world ".
The truth is, every time a reader picks up a business magazine he is looking for more than a grazing exprience, he is looking for some guidance, some handholding. Come Monday, start of a gruelling week, he is looking for news and analysis that he can use. And once inside the conference room, he wants to base his views on credible, hardcore facts and industry opinions. In a nutshell he wants to stay ahead and make informed decisions.
Rich content seems so hard to come by these days. Look at the state of business magazines in India, since both readership and circulation figures have taken a nose dive, correspondingly the pictures have got bigger, the font size of the text matter magnified many fold and the stories have become shorter and shorter inside the magazine. Now that's an extremely dangerous thing the editors and publishers are busy doing these days.
Let's hope Bloomberg Businessweek brings in a whiff of fresh air, which is so badly needed.Looking at the first Issue, Josh and team seem to have made a great start.
VIVA MAGAZINES !!
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