Feature Writing from New Businessweek - on Glock, Apple, Google & Ford

After having my Businessweek subscription expired for the past six months, I decided recently to start reading again... and find the new Bloomberg Businessweek pretty solid.

Each issue is larger than those from the previous format and while a goodly amount of the vignette pieces I'm not into, I find the feature writing excellent. Thus far I've seen four issues and there's been at least one excellent lengthy piece in every issue.

The Jan 13 issue cover story was Glock: America's Gun and a thorough look at the company that for better or worse, has provided arms for American streets (cops and robbers both) over the past 25 years.



Cover stories from the next two issues of BW followed with looks at top companies going through changes (both intended as temporary and permanent) in leadership.

The Jan 19 issue featured Apple, With or Without Steve Jobs and Jan 26 issue Larry Page's Google 3.0. Each story provides a well written and in-depth look at the companies in question.





Finally (at least for the purpose of this blog post) was the Feb 3 issue which featured (but, not as it's cover story) The Happiest Man in Detroit about Ford Motor Company and it's CEO Alan Mulally. I've written about and linked to stories on Ford previously and am pretty well fascinated by the company and it's current (and future) product offerings.

-----

Nothing that would be considered lyrical in any of these pieces, but solid writing on interesting topics.

Time Magazine Pieces - Summer Vacation / Ford / Hyperlocal News / Other Stuff...

Several interesting pieces from Time Magazine over the last two weeks.

The Aug 2 issue cover story was "The Case Against Summer Vacation" by David Von Drehle about the academic damage that's incurred for kids away from learning for three months. Reminded me of both the Von Drehle piece "The Myth About Boys" (posted on here) and other stories I've seen about how lower income students often fall behind during the summer. Attributed cause for this is they don't get as much opportunity for out of classroom learning as do kids from better off families.

Also from this issue was "Are Hyperlocals Replacing Traditional Newspapers?" which covered the wave of new journalism startups over the last few years. Interesting stuff that brought to mind this blog post from Feb 2009 about and linking to the Time cover story "How to Save Your Newspaper".

-----


In the same category of "Time piece that makes me think of past writing" was the Aug 9 issue profile of Ford Motor Company under CEO Alan Mulally titled "How to Make Cars And Make Money Too". Nothing terribly exciting in this particular story, but it does follow up on past writing and stories about Ford I've linked to.

Finally, two other stories about interesting topics from this issue that I wanted to make note of...

- "Funny or Die: How the Web Is Changing Comedy" about the popular website.

-"Building a Better Playground" about the idea of kids play areas having loose items for use rather than simply stuff to slide on and climb.

Nothing in any of these that stood out to me as great writing, but lots of cool topics covered.

Ford Motor Cool Tech Story from Fast Company

I wouldn't have had this view a few years ago, but if I were buying a car right now, me thinks I'd buy a Ford. Coming together Toyota's imploding quality, Ford being the only US automaker to not take huge bailout dollars and their very cool innovation... that's good stuff.

On the innovation front, the April issue of Fast Company featured the most excellent "How Ford’s Sync Technology Will Turn It Into America’s Most Surprising Consumer Electronics Company" from Paul Hochman.

A sidebar piece was all about the Sync communications platform from Ford. Copied directly from this "A Look at the Next Generation of Ford Sync" is the instrument panel on one of the new models with the forthcoming MyFord Touch user interface.



So great... car design that mimics and incorporates the best of consumer technology. From the story I really liked this featured quote from Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally...

"It's cool to connect. But it's past cool. It's a reason to buy. We're going to be the coolest, most useful app you've ever had."

And to answer the question in advance, Mulally is quoted elsewhere in the story as saying "we won't do it unless it lets you keep your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel."

This combines with other mention in the piece of how the open system aspect of the Sync system has influenced other areas of automotive development (related to this June 2009 blog post about the company)... very compelling.
-----

Also from this issue of Fast Company was a pretty interesting story from Ellen McGirt titled "How Adam Carolla Became a Podcast Superstar".

Podcasting has been around for a while, but stories like this along with the companion piece about available podcasts show that it's starting to reach mainstream status.