BusinessWeek is preparing to launch a local monthly edition of its flagship title in Chicago.
BusinessWeek Chicago is slated to debut in November with a controlled circulation of 60,000. The metro-Chicago-focused magazine will be sent free to local BusinessWeek subscribers. Local businesspeople culled from purchased lists will also receive the magazine.
“[Chicago’s] a wonderful market to launch in because there’s no shortage of business news,” Michael Arndt, editor of BusinessWeek Chicago, said. “It’s a business capital, there are important and colorful people here, there are important institutions here and important issues. Anything that you’d see nationally in the world of business you would find here.”
The magazine will run at least 36 pages and will be the same size and design as the national edition. Arndt hopes that the local edition will draw national advertisers who have regional budgets. He also hopes to win ads from local or metro companies.
Arndt formerly served as a senior correspondent at BusinessWeek’s Chicago bureau. The four BusinessWeek reporters stationed in Chicago will contribute articles for the Chicago edition, and new writers will be hired to focus solely on the local title.
“Our research has shown that readers have an intense interest in local news, and we feel there’s a void here in Chicago that we can fill,” Arndt said of his editorial vision. “We intend to take the BusinessWeek model and do it on an intensely local basis, and that means stories that are richly and deeply reported and analytical in tone.”
If all goes well in Chicago, BusinessWeek will expand its local coverage to other major cities. Arndt declined to name which cities the company was considering.
BusinessWeek Chicago will not have its own Web site, but some articles will occasionally be featured on the BusinessWeek national site.
