Bloomberg’s Ambition

(Fortune) — BusinessWeek relaunches this week with a new name, a new design, and a new editorial vision, just four months after it was bought by financial information giant Bloomberg LP. Viewed through the lens of an acquisition, it’s therefore perplexing that Bloomberg executives have declined to talk about when and how this new version of the 80-year old weekly will make money. Instead they tell Fortune their plan is to focus on their consumers and deliver a great product. Those notions seem impossibly idealistic in a world where print advertising revenues are likely to be permanently impaired by cheaper online ad rates, and where nearly every major magazine publisher has recently shuttered unprofitable titles, a fate BusinessWeek, under previous owner McGraw-Hill, very nearly met.