Friday, June 6, 2008

BW Chicago, We Hardly Knew Ye

Word is getting out that Businessweek has pulled the plug on BW Chicago, a local monthly, produced by the magazine's Chicago bureau and a merry band of contributors, including myself.
Long ago, a fellow journalist said that he believed in the "six good clips" theory of career satisfaction. He meant that if you were really proud of a half-dozen stories, or clips as they're known in the dead tree world of newspapers and magazines, per year then you were doing alright.
For me, BW Chicago beat that average. It was out a scant eight issues, but I was proud to be associated with every one of them and grateful for the chance to write something that's increasingly rare in this skittish Chicago media market--a commentary/opinion column about local business.
BW Chicago's editor, Michael Arndt, is a truly gifted craftsman and a good boss. I look forward to reading his work in Businessweek. Same goes for Joe Weber, who runs the Chicago bureau, and everyone else in that office.
Good people, all.
Everyone knows that this is a brutal economy. There's a lot of fear out there right now and that's especially true of advertisers, who even in good times are leery of new media ventures. That goes for print and web products.
BW Chicago took a chance that didn't pay off. It was worth the gamble.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I joined the "merry band" at BWC shortly after leaving the Sun-Times in January.
I second Bob Reed's assessment:
BWC was a quality publication with a great editor, Michael Arndt, at the helm.

Anonymous said...

Given that they allowed just 8 months, a gamble is *all* it was. It certainly wasn't an investment.

Which editorial staffer was laid off?

Andy Vogel said...

Wow. "Pay-off" in 8 months or else? Hard to make sense of the new environment.

Maybe BW should just launch some shoppers?

Anonymous said...

Earlier this decade, I had the good fortune to launch a new magazine and two online news sites. Even with all the marekt volatility back then, most business models gave at least a year--and in some cases as many as five--for the start-ups to become profitable. I'm sorry McGraw Hill saw fit to fold this local publication so soon...

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