Scary publishing news: BusinessWeek sold for <$5 million

I look away for a few days … It was announced earlier this week that BusinessWeek was sold by McGraw-Hill to Bloomberg for under $5 million. BusinessWeek, founded in 1929, used to be the magazine of record of the business world (less opinionated than Forbes, more newsy than Fortune) but has been steadily losing readers over the last decade.

McGraw-Hill was able to generate some bidding between potential buyers, with Bloomberg coming out on top with an offer of between $2 million and $5 million. According to the Business Week website, the magazine has “more than 4.7 million readers each week in 140 countries” and “155 editorial employees at its New York headquarters, 19 correspondents in 9 news bureaus in the U.S., and 12 international correspondents in 8 bureaus.” All that for $2 million to $5 million?

This is just the latest sign that the print industry is in dire trouble: an iconic brand was sold for peanuts.