Media News

Last week, the news broke that BusinessWeek was shuttering its European and Asian print editions, prompting the "worldwide" layoffs of "approximately 60 people across sales, circulation and production" with some editorial employees also included in the mix, a spokesperson confirmed today. The meta-media crowd (including us) concluded that there was nothing to see here (no one we know knew someone operating the printing presses in Europe, after all), but now comes word that closing the overseas editions actually provided a smokescreen at home. Of the "approximately 60" employees affected, nearly half, Revolving Door has learned, were actually domestic staff. Eighteen people were let go outright, and other eight had their positions on the masthead cut out from under them, including a few fairly high up on the masthead: International edition senior editor Michael Serrill and finance editor Chester Dawson, Business Outlook section editor Kathleen Madigan, senior writer Otis Port, Washington correspondents Stan Crock and Paul Magnusson, and associate editor John Koppisch. This a partial list that a BusinessWeek spokesperson declined to confirm or elaborate upon.

Also unconfirmed, at least by the Revolving Door, is what these layoffs close to home mean. Is it a defeat for the new-ish editor Stephen Adler, who was forced to surrender a major layoff at home by the business side powers-that-be? (It's telling that none of the names on this list include correspondents in London, Hong Kong, Frankfurt or Tokyo.) Or was this actually a case of Adler clearing out what he considered dead weight and/or loyalists to departed editor Steve Shepard? Apparently, the staffers let go were no spring chickens, but that there are still plenty of Shepard's crew walking the halls. (Shepard, who is now the dean of CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism, did not return a call for comment.) Either way, it's certain that this didn't help Adler's popularity much.