Businessweek Magazine's Classy Tribute to Steve Jobs | Hacker News Reader

Businessweek Magazine's Classy Tribute to Steve Jobs

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443 pointsnextparadigms61 comments

More likely, they had this issue prepared ahead of time. They, like most observers, knew it was coming. No ads simplifies the logistics of swapping out the issue.

Actually they didn't: https://twitter.com/bizweekdesign/status/121871973688160256 and https://twitter.com/bizweekdesign/status/121918276459696129

All news organisations prepare obituaries and related content for famous figures in advance.

There's a classic piece of BBC lore about this, the story goes that the reason BBC staff are now no longer allowed to browse the library of preprepared obituary pieces is because Margaret Thatcher's tape was getting worn out from being watched and re-watched too many times.

I remember that joke from Drop the Dead Donkey.

There are certainly cases of obituaries that were published where the actual author of the obituary had themselves died several years earlier. I've also heard of journalists who update their own obituary every couple of years.

There's a story circulating about Time literally stopping the presses and creating a new issue in 3 hours. Wouldn't surprise me to learn this was done in similar fashion.

Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/06/apple_rivals_p...

That Time-stopping-the-presses thing seems oddly/inappropriately self promotional also.

Here's the printing press for the LA Times:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/many-la-times-...

It's hard to appreciate the drama of deciding to stop that enormous thing, pulp the hundreds of thousands of papers already printed, and re-print everything from scratch, without understanding the scale of the operation.

People had an issue about the Amanda Knox release in my supermarket less than 48 hours after the event. This happens a lot more often now.

Without a doubt prepared in advance - you'd be incompetent as a news org not to do so. It's still however a fantastically put together thing and to have no ads in there whatsoever is quite a dedication.

The Ipad issue which is gorgeous as well, actually has a video where they do confirm that they had a lot of the content already done before and they pulled in all-nighters as soon as they heard about his death to put it all together.

Most likely. Kind of like how WSJ spat out an obituary 19 minutes after Jobs' death.

BusinessWeek has done some great design since Bloomberg took over, and this issue is no exception. Fitting, simple tribute.

Exactly! For those who doesn't yet know, Richard Turley, creative director of Businessweek has a tumblr page where he puts magazine's covers from time to time. Worth to follow. Url: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/

Some of my favourites:

Khadafi: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/post/9373871854/now-about-th...

Bezos: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/post/10807034868/amazon-the-...

9/11: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/post/8470431158/been-a-bit-q...

Moynihan: http://richardturley.tumblr.com/post/9957165968/can-moynihan...

Absolutely. This is one of those cases where you grab a young aspiring designer, and show them what an exceptional example of design and typeography looks like.

This is for sure a collectors item.

This is a great video the BW guys put together showing how they produce an issue of the magazine:

http://vimeo.com/22746195

I'd be shocked if they hadn't already seen the compliments, but I'll pass them on just in case :)

Indeed! The typography in this issue, and the design of cover, specifically, are very fitting!

> There was not a single ad in the issue.

I would say it's the other way around.

Given the perceived importance of the iPad (and digital publishing) to the future of the magazine industry, one might say this is a canny strategic move on Newsweek's part.

As I've said several times here, Jobs and Apple have made contributions across sufficiently many sectors of society that I do not attribute strictly self-interested motives, but given 1) all the cultural and historical significance of his passing and 2) the value of a bit of kow-towing, the action on Newsweek's part doesn't entirely surprise me.

Not to nitpic, but it was BusinessWeek, not Newsweek.

Gah! Point.

Wow. I might actually buy this magazine from a newsstand. Way to differentiate!

Yep, I'm actually kind of excited to hit the news stand in the morning in hopes of getting a few. It's definitely a first.

Yeah, I'm going to pick one up later today.

Me too. Hope I can find one in the UK!

For those marveling at how quickly Businessweek, Time and others have turned around tributes to Jobs, this is exactly where print journalists earn their stripes. Newsweeklies have to respond quickly to breaking stories, if they are going to be seen as relevant by readers.

For those who are prematurely predicting the death of print media, collections like this show how journalism professionals can still run rings around all but the best online news outlets.

"Tragedy today, as former President Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves. He was delicious."

You realize they all have this sort of thing prepared ahead of time?

See the Twitter links posted elsewhere in this thread, but for the most part it looks like they didn't. I'm sure that they had some advance reportage on-hand to draw from, but that's the case for almost any major story.

Where can I get one of these in SF? Nothing in the mission seems to carry BW.

I just posted a task on TaskRabbit for it because I am also clueless on where to buy physical magazines anymore :(

Good News on 24th Street should have it by tomorrow.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

On the night of Steve Jobs's death I stopped by the Fifth Avenue cube just to see what the mood was like (it was pretty much normal with a small crowd outside and some flowers) and I ran into a former colleague who now is a reporter at Businessweek. She told me that this week's issue was literally ready to go to press and then the news of Jobs's death broke, so they threw it out and she was there at 11PM getting customer comment on the event, and everyone else was putting in another 12 hour shift to re-create the issue (of course, some of the content had already been assembled in the event of Jobs's passing).

Great to see that their hustle and hardwork paid off. It's an entirely different thing to redo a weekly magazine the night of publication than it is a newspaper or website.

Not to discount Businessweek's release, but the reality is that media organizations devote enormous amounts of time to prepare for the imminent death of a popular/famous figure. I'd bet that weeks of effort were put into what consists of Businessweek's release on Jobs' death while Steve was alive. What they produced doesn't come together in a couple days.

Remember the Bloomberg accidental 17 page obituary release for Steve Jobs in 2007?

Don't discount the media's efforts when being the first with the "extensive article" on the death and past history of someone important puts you first out of the gate.

Agreed. It's a bit naive to think they assembled this at the last minute.

With that said, having a whole issue dedicated to someone in this manner (photos, quotes, no ads) is still pretty awesome.

It’s perfectly alright to believe that they assembled this in the last minute. It’s a bit naive to believe that they created all the content in the last minute. (Some of the content, however, most certainly had to be created in the last minute.)

I didn't say they hadn't prepared. Every major news publication has had an obit prepared. But Businessweek had to tear out their current cover article and others, and do layout and pagination among other traditional publishing tasks unrelated to content gathering. The fact that my former colleague was out gathering reaction also shows that some work has to be done to make the content up to date

...and why couldn't all of that have been prepared in advance? I find it somewhat disturbing to have already prepared an obituary, but how do we know that there isn't a pile of similarly, very well produced and finished magazines waiting to go the press of other famous business figures?

A fitting tribute indeed.

In fact, I'd pay to have something like this for some of my family members once they pass. Sure, everyone wouldn't have 60+ pages, but having a coffee table tribute mag that tells their life story with beautiful pictures and typography would be a fitting tribute to anyone.

Anyone do something like this? Great weekend project for someone to hack together.

http://1000memories.com does a good job of collating the information, but you're right, a print version would be awesome.

>In fact, I'd pay to have something like this for some of my family members once they pass.

You can do this manually via book creation services like picaboo.com; that's what my family did for my grandma after she died last year.

You'd pay to have it done? Wouldn't it only be fitting if you made it yourself?

By have it done I mean:

- I upload pics and timeline

- Choose most important events or quotes

- The site pushes out a preview that uses a professionally designed layout

- If I like it I can purchase it

- Nice tribute mag personalized for my loved one arrives in the mail

iPhoto can actually get you pretty close to this.

Is there any way to buy this single issue online?

Yes. B&N allows single issue purchase of BusinessWeek viewable on the nook and nook apps. Amazon only allows you to view it on the Kindle (and not the Kindle app either). $1.50 for a single issue, no subscription....it's a no brainer.

I meant a physical copy.

Amazon only allows you to view it on the Kindle (and not the Kindle app either). $1.50 for a single issue, no subscription....it's a no brainer

It doesn't include any of the photos though. There's a link to all the content including images in the article.

update: removed links, they're in the article.

is there any way the peeps outside of US can see it? i really want to read it.

I bought the digital issue on Zinio on my iPad for 4 euro:

http://www.zinio.com/browse/publications/index.jsp?productId...

There are high quality PDFs illegally uploaded to file sharing sites. Just do a search for it.

I couldn't find a way to buy the PDF unfortunately. It's always a shame when pirating something is the only way to get access to it.

well if they were generous enough to not give any ads and make is a Steve-only issue, they should also have made it publicly available for free. It makes no sense to charge for a tribute issue IMO :O

If you'd just like to read the content, most of the writing is on businessweek.com - look in the upper-right-hand corner and you'll see a grey section devoted to it.

Thanks! but there are 5 articles there.. is that it?

I just got the UK Kindle edition. It doesn't have any pictures! Does anyone know where I could find a print copy?

Do you know whether this is sold only in the U.S. or worldwide as well?

Anyone know if this will be available in Newstand on iOS5? The "Store" link on my GM seed doesn't work yet.

I just downloaded the issue on my iPad. Download the businessapp, and you'll need to subscribe (but you can cancel later) to download the current issue of Steve Jobs.

When does this issue hit news stands?

Lovely tribute to a great man. Too bad I can't order this in Canada.

There was one ad... a big Apple ad! Just kidding.

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