As expected, layoffs came down yesterday at Business Week, and the numbers were huge. Bloomberg’s Norm Pearlstine, who will soon assume his role of chairman at the magazine, cut 130 staffers — or roughly a third of the entire workforce. It was assumed that when the title was bought by Bloomberg there would be changes, but it looks like the cuts mean that the newswire giant plans to entirely change the character of the title, too. According to Keith Kelly, 60 to 70 percent of editorial staffers are on the way out, including columnists closely associated with the brand, like media writer Jon Fine, Wall Street reporter Gene Marcial, tech writers Steve Wildstrom and Steve Baker, and “Business Outlook” columnist Jim Cooper. Kelly has an extensive list of the other top writers who were ousted. Chunks of the online department were also eliminated. Rebuilding a brand to such a great extent puts a lot of pressure on 37-year-old Josh Tyrangiel, whom Pearlstine stole away from Time last week. Taking over a business brand when you don’t have a lot of financial-reporting experience is one thing. Doing it without the brand’s best writers and columnists is entirely different.
Daily Beast bites exec [NYP]
