Stephen Adler said late on Tuesday that he will resign from his post as editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek after its sale to Bloomberg LP is finalized in December.
“It was hugely important to me to help find the right home for BusinessWeek and to work closely with our business-side colleagues to ensure that staffers would be provided appropriate benefits under any circumstance,” Adler wrote in a memo. "Now that these goals have been accomplished, I’m considering other opportunities, and I believe it makes sense for a new owner to move forward with a new editor.”
McGraw-Hill announced last week that it will sell the magazine to Bloomberg, at a reported price of less than $5 million, plus the assumption of significant debt.
The departure of Adler paves the way for Norm Pearlstine, former Time Inc. editor and soon-to-be BusinessWeek chairman, to handpick a candidate for the top editor post.
Which means the early money is on Jim Kelly, former managing editor of Time Inc. who has been enlisted by Pearlstine to “help with the transition,” to get the job. (Adler and Pearlstine, too, were once colleagues at the Wall Street Journal.)
Other candidates that have been floated include Eric Pooley, former managing editor of Fortune, and Joanne Lipman, who had served as editor of Condé Nast's failed Portfolio.
Kelly would be a fine choice. My money, however, is on John Byrne, executive editor, editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com and one prolific tweeter (I once referred to him as “tweeter-in-chief,” and will take credit for coining the term.)
Kelly did not immediately return an e-mail seeking comment. And Byrne is off on his honeymoon, after getting married last weekend in San Francisco.
Here’s Adler’s full memo, via BusinessWeek:
October 20, 2009
Colleagues:
I want you to be the first to know that I will be leaving BusinessWeek when Bloomberg becomes its new owner in December.
It was hugely important to me to help find the right home for BusinessWeek and to work closely with our business-side colleagues to ensure that staffers would be provided appropriate benefits under any circumstance. Now that these goals have been accomplished, I’m considering other opportunities, and I believe it makes sense for a new owner to move forward with a new editor.
I’m excited about the sale to Bloomberg and about BusinessWeek’s opportunity to prosper under its leadership. I’m confident the Bloomberg team shares our journalistic standards and will bring new passion, new ideas, and new resources to the endeavor. I look forward to working with you and with the Bloomberg team to make the smoothest-possible transition.
I’m very proud of the work the BusinessWeek team has done in the past five years. You’ve broken an extraordinary series of stories and won a record number of awards, including the most prestigious in our business. You’ve provided the indispensable journalism for which our magazine has long been famous—and on which our readers depend.
