Business World has revolutionised the world of business journalism, the way internet or computers have done our lives. Traditionally business reporting was supposed to be a very serious matter handled by experts and they used to churn out boring, jargon-filled, very very long articles on business topics.
For starters, Business World is published once a week, unlike all the present biggies, which are published monthly or fortnightly. What that achieved was promptness in reporting. If the Enron scam breaks out and it took a magazine one month to give you a full story, you would have already read all about it in the newspapers and would now be more interested with the latest happenings.
The news articles are reported in brief and not unnecessarily long (wherever necessary, ‘brevity’ is the essence of MS reviews too, am I right?). The articles also are very interesting unlike the boring monotonous ones written traditionally.
The cover stories were excellent. They deal with the future and upcoming events / articles / hype rather than dwell on the past. Their excellent cover stories used to cover IT hype, Stock Market, Dot Com boom, Nasdaq, etc. Then it slowly started predicting the Stock Market crash, Dot Com bubble burst, etc. Now it deals with Call centres, BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), telecom, etc.
The editorial is also very hip and young. The whole look of the magazine was also very hip. There are a lot of very interesting columns and pages devoted to latest technologies, book reviews, etc. The columns handled by Mala Bhargawa (on internet and new technologies) and other eminent writers are excellent. The case study section is also a very interesting read and an innovative idea. The analysis of the case are done by renowned people in the industry.
The subscription offers of Business World are also very lucrative, with the five year one being the most mouth watering. I subscribed for the five year option two years back when they offered the book ’‘Business @ The Speed of Thought’ written by Bill Gates free with the subscription.
All this comes at a meagre price of Rs.5 per issue, even if purchased off the book store. That makes it Rs.20 per month of quality, timely and interesting read.