Obama BusinessWeek Cover Shoot: Sales Pitch or Swan Song?

President Obama has been on an impressive number of covers this week — Time, The Economist, The New Republic, New York Magazine, to name a few. All the newsstand facetime might have something to do with the Executive Branch’s ‘full saturation media habits.‘ Or maybe Obama’s face just sells magazines.

If the latter is true, it would explain why BusinessWeek has joined the pack, and even upped the ante with its cover this week, sending photographer Brad Trent to photograph the president while he answered questions from BW editor in chief Steve Adler and Washington bureau chief Jane Sasseen.

“There are assignments…and then there are assignments,” Trent wrote about the shoot on his blog Damn Ugly Photography:

First we went from half the editorial staff of the magazine wanting to come along, while I would bring two assistants and a few tons of gear for the intense, overly complex formal cover situation. Then, as we learned more details of what kind of access the White House would allow, it appeared that I might have to go in paparazzi style…just me and a single camera bag going into the Oval Office to document the Q & A, with no time to do an extra set up.

Publisher McGraw-Hill has put BusinessWeek up for sale (on the chopping block?), and things aren’t looking so good. PaidContent reported late last week that out of four possible buyers, one has definitely dropped out, and another is “almost certain not to proceed” either. This, before any formal bidding has even begun.

We wonder if BusinessWeek asked the president to save room in his birthday wishes for ad pages — more than 36% behind last year. Otherwise BW might be lights-out like the candles on Obama’s cake.

More images from the shoot on Damn Ugly Photography. Don’t miss Trent’s mosaic of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.

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