Bloomberg Businessweek’s editor believes print remains the ultimate “distraction-free news product”
As part of a larger “rethink,” Bloomberg Media’s signature print product, Bloomberg Businessweek, is now publishing every month.
The magazine’s new editor, Brad Stone, spent decades reporting on the tech industry for Bloomberg, The New York Times, and Newsweek before taking the reins at Businessweek earlier this year. Despite the industry headwinds that reduced the printing schedule, Stone believes the healthier-looking monthly edition remains the best place to read the magazine’s signature long-form work. The redesigned first issue, with a cover story by Stone, is on newsstands now.
The print relaunch comes alongside an important digital mandate, Stone told me. Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait has asked the newsroom to make converting readers into digital subscribers its “North Star.” (Earlier this year, when Bloomberg Media had 500,000 consumer subscribers, Micklethwait said he believed it was a “number which I think we can multiply aggressively.”) A full-priced Bloomberg subscription costs $299/year and includes digital access to Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg TV, and other subscriber-only content. Adding a Businessweek print subscription will set you back another $30.
Six years after introducing digital subscriptions, Bloomberg Media recently surpassed 590,000 subscribers. Monthly subscriber conversions are up a whopping 28% in the first quarter of 2024 as compared to last year, a spokesperson said. And Businessweek has an important role to play — it boasts one of the highest subscriber conversion rates across the sprawling Bloomberg Media operation.
The Businessweek website is currently headlined by stories on how Rivian became the anti-Tesla and a potential rival to the Olympic Games where the athletes are allowed to take steroids. But alongside investigations and profiles of “the most important people and companies in business,” the magazine also publishes fresh culture and lifestyle content. The “Going Viral” vertical, for example, explains “the story behind the hit” (most recently: why the spicy romantasy genre is taking off) while the “Pursuits” section currently ranks “the best lawn games for competitive kids, teens, and tipsy adults.” The print edition has been redesign to include “shorter, forward-looking reporting and explainers,” a new logic puzzle, and more data graphics.
Stone lives in California (he has three teenage daughters he doesn’t want to uproot with a cross-country move) but when we spoke near the end of June, he was working from the Bloomberg offices in New York City.
Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
Now, that said, Businessweek is, in a lot of ways, a daily product. We’re a daily newsletter. We publish stories every single day across all Bloomberg digital properties. We aim for three long-form stories a week. And the print magazine, now monthly, is kind of the crystallization of our identity. Obviously it’s got to be a little different — the stories have to be a little more evergreen. We can’t be as newsy as when we were a weekly magazine. But the mission is the same — which is to explore, chronicle, [and] examine leaders and companies and technology and business and economics and politics. And to help people who work in business, or students of business, to learn about this complicated world. I do think having a print magazine and being able to spend some time with it outside the noise has a lot of value.
But I have to ask: did Bloomberg Businessmonth ever get put on a whiteboard? I mean, how close did we come to seeing a name change?
So yes, it was considered. And, yes, we’re really waving the flag now. We’ve kept the name, and it means a lot to people. What it stands for is this rigorous examination of the people and the companies and the issues that matter in business.
But in terms of our front of the magazine storytelling, we have to think about it differently. So, yeah, turning to profiles, an interview series that we’re calling “five questions,” the “walk with” series. We’re taking advantage of the kinds of live events that Bloomberg Live is doing all the time and the kinds of executives who are coming into our offices, and even timing to things that are happening in the real world, like the RNC or the DNC. We’re asking: how can we take advantage of those moments? And I would say in terms of a “walk with,” if it’s President Biden, we probably are not doing a “walk with,” right? That’s a deeper story. For “a walk with,” we want to identify interesting figures in the world of business and politics and finance and sports and stories that may be a little underappreciated that we can bring Businessweek’s flair and style to. We spend some time with them, literally, take a walk with, [and] get outside our conference room or an office and learn about them. In the inaugural issue, we have an Olympian who’s built a social media empire.
It sounds like some of this research happened before you took the position, but what consumption habits are we talking about here? And, just personally, did any of the reader research surprise you?
So, look, I’m under no illusion. Our readers are, in large part, encountering and interacting and responding to our stories online. None of that was a surprise. The effort in reimagining the monthly magazine was to give that still-robust Businessweek circulation something different and satisfying that can stand apart and might be beautiful and something that they want to have on their coffee table and sit with for weeks or a month.
Could you talk to me a little about that? Because the redesign does include a new mix of short and long pieces, as well as more graphics. How do you think through what justifies a longer read?
So — we’re careful about the stories that we tell. When we go long, they have to justify their length. But we do see in our numbers and on Apple News+ and in the conversion rate — which we study pretty carefully — when readers are becoming Bloomberg.com subscribers, when it works. And when it works, it works. We also survey our readers, and they tell us that long-form features are one of the most valuable things about Businessweek. I think the LVMH [cover story] becomes our canonical example. This is a fascinating figure, and if you get to the end of the story, you find that Bernard Arnault has taken a personal stake in one of his biggest rivals, that he’s appointed his youngest kid to an executive role in one of the holding companies, and that, even though he’s 75, he has no plans to retire. Stories that can deliver throughout the length of the story and deliver a satisfying third-act twist? We think that justifies the length.
So, Businessweek isn’t Markets — we’re not that transactional — but if we can help people and make them smarter in their careers and their lives, and give them something interesting to talk about or interesting to bring into work, then they’re going to pay for it. Ultimately, Businessweek has to be useful to people, and if we’re useful to them, then they’ll pay for it.
That’s not to say there’s any retreat in terms of the creativity that we bring to it, but I just wanted it to feel different and paring it back somewhat is about reducing the distance between the magazine and the articles and our readers. I want to make sure that nothing distracted from the articles and our subjects and our analysis. We’ve got the most talented group of designers, probably, in the world of magazines and we’re going to do eye-catching and striking things. But to start out, for a monthly, I wanted it to feel different [and] like a visual departure.
There’s a little bit more of an adversarial relationship between the press and tech companies and tech leaders — not always, but certainly sometimes — and that’s because they are maybe less idolized, if that’s the right word. They’re seen as powerful forces in our society that deserve really close and somewhat skeptical scrutiny. That’s because of the ways in which they’ve wielded their power and consolidated control over the economy. So, yeah, it does feel quite different today versus when I started.
Apple News is this tremendous boon to Businessweek and we don’t just get traffic from Apple News, but we get paid by Apple News. I think we have to be transactional and selfish about it. We’re there to take those readers and make them our readers and subscribers. It’s a wonderful relationship; I do think Apple is building a tremendous product with Apple News+ and I’m a huge fan of it. But history teaches us that it’s probably never a good idea to have intermediaries between you and your readers, right?
So with Joel Weber, who was the former editor of Businessweek and is working in a different part of the newsroom, we sat down and conceived this game. There’s a tremendous puzzle master — his name is Andrew Chaikin, and goes by the wonderful name “Kid Beyond” — and we asked him to develop a game with us. You saw the first version of it [in the inaugural issue] but we’re looking forward to really experimenting and trying new things in forthcoming issues.
In the launch issue, the profile of Jeff Yass is the work of Bloomberg News’ wonderful Wall Street reporter Annie Massa. There are million other examples. We have this enormous resource that powers the magazine and provides an unending stream of great ideas from the journalists we work with.