Bloomberg Businessweek December 23, 2019
ThefirstissueofthismagazineappearedonSept.7, 1929.Itsblack,red,and
goldartdecocoverwasfreeofnews.It featureda bigtriangle pointing down
ataninscrutablephoto—an overhead, nighttime view of an intersection in an
unidentified big city.
The editors obviously had no way to know that seven
weeks later the stock market would crash, ushering in the
GreatDepression.Theydidobservethat“themarketis now
almostwholly‘psychological’—irregular, unsteady, and prop-
erlyapprehensiveoftheinevitablereadjustmentthatdraws
near.”Butin themetaphorical style of the day, they also said,
“There is no financial frost in the air as yet, and we look for a
long stretch of Indian summer in industry before winter sets
in.” The first issue carried squibs on tariffs, railroads, farms,
Palestine, and even this tech breakthrough: “Dry Ice Finds
Many New Uses.”
How we’ve survived, thrived, and evolved from 1929 to
2019 is a sprawling tale. We’ve been shaped by each of the
thousands of journalists who’ve worked here over the past
nine decades, sweating every sentence, photograph, illustra-
tion, chart, and cover. We’ve also been shaped by every story
we’vedone,fromWorldWarII toWeWork.Weare 90 years
oldbutstilla perpetualnewborn,created anew each week.
To say “we” is presumptuous of today’s staff, since of
course no one from 1929 is here anymore. On the other
hand, there’s institutional memory. Jim Ellis, the editor of
ourBusinesssection and one of the authors of this essay, has been with
the magazine since 1980. He overlapped for a few years with John Cobbs,
who started in 1942. Cobbs in turn overlapped with Ralph Smith, editor from
1937 to 1949, who’d been with The Business Week from its beginning. So,
just three people span our entire history.
We’ve been through a lot of changes, right down to our name: first
The Business Week, then Business Week, then BUSINESS WEEK, then
BusinessWeek. And since 2009, Bloomberg Businessweek, as part of
Bloomberg LP, which acquired us from the McGraw-Hill Cos.
Our decade inside Bloomberg is an echo of our eight inside McGraw-Hill.
At “Mother McGraw,” BusinessWeek was the flagship publication, drawing on
reporting from a network of specialty trade publications ranging from Modern
Plastics to Engineering News-Record. At Bloomberg, the magazine’s staff har-
nesses its 2,700-plus journalists and analysts, who work in 120 countries.
Something else has persisted: our mission. “Its ambition is to become indis-
pensable,” the editors wrote in the inaugural issue. “The Business Week never
will be content to be a mere chronicle of events. It aims always to interpret
their significance.” That promise stands up pretty well today, as does our
determination to serve you, our reader. If nothing else, our longevity suggests
we’ve been doing something right on that score.
Not that we’re always on the money. Even in the magazine’s earliest days,
the editors were slow to realize the economic carnage that was transpiring.71▼ 1930s
● 1931
McGraw-Hill, the magazine’s publisher, moves into 330 W. 42nd St.,
a 35-story, blue-green masterpiece designed by Raymond Hood.
Inhabitants liked to joke that it was like a pistachio: “Green on the
outside, nutty on the inside.”
● 1934
The Business Week becomes simply
Business Week. (Editing at its finest!)