Dow Jones Executive Recruited To Be Bloomberg BusinessWeek President

A Dow Jones executive charged with boosting revenues across the company’s various print and online properties will become the first president of Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Paul Bascobert, 45, will be responsible for finding new revenue opportunities for the magazine, as well as boosting circulation and reversing the losses that BusinessWeek has posted during the past several years. He begins his job on Jan. 4. (see below for a staff memo announcing Bascobert’s hiring from Bloomberg CEO Daniel Doctoroff and Bloomberg BusinessWeek Chairman Norman Pearlstine). Bloomberg’s acquisition of BusinessWeek closed on Dec. 1.

Despite the dire shape of the media industry, Bascobert says he is optimistic “because I see a real demand for a well-written global business product.” He says it is too early to articulate what his concrete plans will be for the magazine, but “I am encouraged by the forward thinking at Bloomberg.”

Bascobert did say that he believes a weekly magazine is a better complement to a business news website than a daily newspaper. Providing a daily news digest online and then a deeper, more analytical take on business weekly, he says, serves readers more fully.

At Dow Jones, where he served as chief marketing officer of its Consumer Media Group, Bascobert’s accomplishments included everything from lowering operating costs by streamlining distribution and outsourcing certain IT functions to helping launch local editions for The Wall Street Journal. He also managed to do the unthinkable in this depressed newspaper market: boost circulation revenues.

Read more at BusinessWeek Media Blog