THE competition appears to be melting away as Mayor Mike Bloomberg‘s high-octane SWAT team from Bloomberg LP pored over the financials at BusinessWeek in advance of a bid deadline that was to be last night but could extend to week’s end.
From the moment The Post’s Web site broke the story last week that Bloomberg was back in the hunt for BusinessWeek, Mayor Mike’s company has emerged the frontrunner, while Lazard boss and New York magazine owner Bruce Wasserstein, is dropping out of the race.
Even before Bloomberg re-entered the race, Joe Mansueto, the owner of Fast Company and Inc. magazines, was also said to be losing interest in the magazine, with one source saying that Mansueto had already dropped out.
Three other suitors, Warburg Pincus and Platinum Equity Partners, both private-equity firms, and TV Guide owner OpenGate, are all said to remain in the running.
While the mayor himself did not hear BusinessWeek owner McGraw-Hill’s pitch, sources said a team of Bloomberg LP executives, led by President Dan Doctoroff and Chief Content Officer Norman Pearlstine, did.
Others in attendance — and who are providing a strong hint of how the magazine might fit into the Bloomberg fold — included Kevin Krim, business head of bloomberg.com, Alex Dyner, head of news and multimedia strategy, and Mike Dukmejian, publisher of Bloomberg Markets magazine.
Said one source, “they are already talking integration” of BW with Bloomberg.
Also part of the Bloomberg team was Alex Hocherman, a vice president at Quadrangle Group, who some observ ers speculated was on hand to provide either advice or financing.
Matt Winkler, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg who has been largely sidelined, was not involved with the due diligence team, but did tell staff yes terday morning that Bloomberg was bidding and that Pearlstine was quarterbacking the process.
Flat hat
The “Top Hat” and “galley slaves” are likely to become relics once the management-consultant firm McKinsey & Co. completes its report on glitzy publisher Condé Nast in the next few weeks.
However, the good news is that no more magazines are expected to be shuttered in the immediate future, and that there are plans to make all of the business properties profitable.
“They don’t want to see any red ink next year,” a source said.
McKinsey’s interviewing of ed itors and executives has ended, sources said. Now all that remains is for a report to land on the desks of Chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr., CEO Charles Townsend and other top-tier ex ecutives either at month’s end or in early October.
Condé Nast Chief Operating Officer John Bellando and CFO Jennifer Graham are talking jointly to publishers and chief editors of individual magazines this week and next, reviewing their budgets for the new year. Such meetings have been rare at the company.
“The mood is very nervous,” said one insider.
Among the changes likely coming are a curtailment of the use of Town Cars and business-class flights, and there is an expectation that budgets could be cut as much as 30 percent.
One source said that the rather time-consuming process of putting galleys of editorial content on paper and then physically walking those galleys from editor to editor for editorial changes will be gone. Editors’ scribbled notes would have to be entered into a computer, and were then repeated as more edits were made.
Also, severance packages known as a Top Hat — one of the perks that made Condé Nast what it is — are also seen as vulnerable.
A Top Hat referred to a super generous retirement bonus that Newhouse would bestow on longtime favored executives, and they amounted to the shortfall between an executive’s retirement compensation and the final-year salary. The bonuses generally lasted 10 years.
The awards were always done very quietly and many current employees did not even know they existed.
“I imagine the Top Hat will be gone,” said one source.
Live wire
David Bradley, owner of Atlantic Media, has unveiled a new venture, TheAtlanticwire.com, a new Web site that Publisher Jay Lauf hopes will attract 500,000 unique monthly visitors by year-end and later reach 1 million.
The new site will introduce The Atlantic 50, a ranking of the most influential opinion makers.
Among them are 13 Washington Post columnists, eight from The New York Times, five from The Wall Street Journal and others from MSNBC and Fox News Channel, which, like The Post, is owned by News Corp. Eight others are bloggers.
According to the list, which was compiled by editors and data crunchers, the Top 10, starting from No. 1, are Paul Krugman, Rush Limbaugh, George Will, Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Charles Krau thammer, Glenn Beck, Frank Rich, Andrew Sullivan and Karl Rove.
The site is launching with sponsors Toyota and German software maker SAP.
The launch comes as Bradley has hired Slate founding editor Michael Kinsley as a columnist writing about media. He will also be the editor-in-chief of a yet-to-be-named new digital project coming next year.