BusinessWeek calls the relationship “meaningful and transactional.” Here’s how so: (1) Burkle’s donated $1.86 million to the Democratic Party since 1992; (2) Clinton “brought Burkle into circles of government and celebrity he would never have been able to crack on his own”; (3) “For five years after Clinton left office, he was an adviser to Yucaipa, earning at least $15 million for making phone calls, brokering introductions, and giving speeches on Yucaipa’s behalf.”

On balance, that sounds like a pretty damn good deal for them both: cold hard cash for Clinton, and global access and clout for Burkle. So why is Burkle sulking?

According to him, it’s because Clinton brought him trouble — like, people noticing when Burkle did shady things. Here’s what he told Business Week, who frames it oh-so-delicately:

Each brought the other a fair amount of trouble. “When Clinton left the Presidency he had to make money, and there were certain limits on how he could do it,” says Burkle. “In that regard, having him work for Yucaipa was the right thing to do. In other ways, it was the dumbest thing I ever did.”

Clinton’s post-Presidential business and social life received intense scrutiny, and Burkle—the divorced billionaire with a Boeing (BA) 757—became an object of curiosity and often scorn. “If someone wanted to embarrass [Clinton], I got thrown in it, too,” says Burkle. “I got all that for free.” Burkle also received a lot of attention when he unsuccessfully sued Michael Ovitz over a failed partnership and when he claimed he was the victim of an extortion attempt by a New York gossip reporter.

Poor blameless baby! Surely these meanies paying attention to him because of Clinton should not have noticed anything sketchy he was involved in. Never mind the girls, though Lord knows that burned up the gossip pages. There was other sketchy stuff:

When Hillary Clinton was nominated as Secretary of State in 2008, Bill severed his ties with Yucaipa and Burkle. Some of Yucaipa’s business dealings were getting messy. It hired as a consultant the now jailed Italian developer Raffaello Follieri and took on Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, as a partner. Burkle says he and Clinton don’t see much of each other anymore and explains the rupture this way: “Before, every trip with him seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity. Now I have so many things to do.”

Sheesh. Who exactly is Burkle trying to kid? Fine, hanging with the Big Dog is going to get you attention (the kind of attention you pay $15 million over 5 years for, apparently). But let’s not blame him for the fact that there was stuff to find. And actually, by all accounts Clinton is a demanding travel buddy (as David Remick illustrated in his mammoth Clinton profile a few years back) — but still. You have so many things to do? Really? Come on.

There may be (and almost certainly are) secret underlying reasons for the split that go beyond what’s out there, but it’s not rocket science why Clinton had to distance from Burkle — and the bad press the two got together. As Nick Denton put it on Gawker two years ago: “With Hillary Clinton in a battle for the Democratic nomination, her husband does not need a billionaire modelizer as a friend.” Indeed: note that in the VF article, the “Air Fuck One” reference came in the fourth paragraph, followed by a former Clinton aide calling him “radioactive.” BusinessWeek may have been credulous here, but the rest of us know better.

Included in the list of those leaving in addition to BW editor Stephen Adler, are community manager Shirley Brady, technology writer Stephen Baker, department editor Lauren Young, and staff writer Amy Choi. Also not returning is media columnist Jon Fine (side note: Fine is married to my former employer Laurel Touby), who twittered the news earlier today.

Revealing a portion of the nominally confidential guidelines, Kurtz quotes:

“Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything — including photographs or video — that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.”

When the news first hit we called these guidelines “actually pretty reasonable,” but wondered aloud if it was a good idea to “remove all evidence of personality from the reporter’s product.” Many media critics, bloggers and editors had similar questions, raised throughout the week, many of whom Kurtz’s column cites substantially, including paidContent, Business Week‘s Stephen Baker, David Carr of the New York Times and Time‘s James Poniewozik. And though Kurtz gives paragraphs of his column to the criticisms they have, his counterpoints are deflated: “This is all much ado about nothing,” he all but writes — “There’s nothing to see here!” In his words:

“Not to put a damper on a great fuss, but I think this is entirely reasonable. I don’t see it as a corporate attempt to crush creativity and sap the soul. People follow journalists on Twitter and Facebook because they’re interested in what the person writes, blogs or says on television. We can’t pretend we’re random people who can just pop off at will.”

Instead of elaborating on his defense of the guidelines — which include not talking about the paper’s business moves or newsroom — Kurtz spends his first handful of paragraphs joking around about inane tweets, and halfheartedly assuring that the Post is not squashing any employee’s personal brand: “No one is saying we can’t engage on these sites, or that some Post editor has to provide tweet-by-tweet approval.”

Astutely, Carr writes in the Times, “Mainstream outlets who gag social media efforts are unilaterally disarming in the ongoing war for reader attention.” Kurtz calls Carr’s a “salient point” but continues to say that he doesn’t believe the rules “reflect a lack of trust. There’s no czar in charge. Management is just asking folks to think twice before sharing something with the world,” Kurtz writes. You can practically picture him shrugging.

>>>NEXT: Does Kurtz kind of agree with critics of the Post?

As we reported last week, Bloomberg expressed interest in BusinessWeek late in the process, but was given extra time to perform due diligence.

Regarding the bid, Fine reported today:

After being given a few days’ grace past the September 15 deadline for final bids for BusinessWeek, Bloomberg LP submitted its bid for the 80-year old business magazine, according to executives familiar with the situation.

A Bloomberg spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an email, but previously declined to comment on Bloomberg’s interest, real or imagined, in a bid for BusinessWeek. A spokesman for BusinessWeek parent company McGraw-Hill declined to comment on the number or identity of final bidders, but said the company was “very pleased with the meaningful interest” displayed in BusinessWeek.

Other than Bloomberg, among the bidders—plural, as there are more than one—for BusinessWeek is OpenGate Capital, the private equity firm that owns TV Guide magazine.

A bid from Bloomberg is widely expected to make the business information giant the prohibitive favorite to purchase BusinessWeek.

Fine goes on to dig up a quote from a previous interview he’d conducted with Norm Pearlstine, the former Editor-in-Chief of Time Inc. and current Chief Content Officer of Bloomberg: “We’re looking at potential acquisitions,” sa[id] Pearlstine. “We’re just sort of saying: ‘Hey, we’re looking for good ideas.’”

Fine seems to imply that the acquisition of BusinessWeek is a “good idea.” Or is that just wishful thinking?

Mary Louise Parker — the maintstream, not to mention sterile, face of rampant marijuana use, after her five-season success on Showtime’s Weeds. With her help, and some magic leaf, this cover could actually grab a few non-Fortune-reading stoners. And “Wall Street: One Year Later” up top is a nifty hard-news peg.

Mediaite Grade (B+): Hey, an issue of Fortune about pot — that’s pretty cool. Oh wait, Sage, the color, what are you doing here? You’re not very cool. If this cover was trying to make marijuana seem staid (which it probably is), then it’s a wild success. We wonder how their pot story stacks up to New York mag’s.

Before we snub The Economist, we want to get one thing straight: We know the cover isn’t what sells the magazine (it’s the incisive content, dummy). That said, we have to ask if these Economist covers are a nose-in-the-air smirk at the rest of the magazine industry, or just the product of uninspired designers who hate sharing an office with neurotic econ-types?

Mediaite Grade (D): We don’t need to beat a dead horse, or a series of plastic horses revolving in a circle, but this cover is bush league. Tucking the dollar sign ornament at the top of the carousel into the deck? It’s not cute. It’s not imaginative. We worry that a bunch of professionals actually sat down together and brainstormed this cover, or spent any time thinking about it at all. We’ve seen you do your best work before, Economist design team, now keep it up. If for no other reason, to set a good example for Newsweek (their cover this week — yikes).

Magazines are at their best when they jump on the next hot thing, rather than just distilling a week or month’s worth of news. The latest edition of Forbes does both, highlighting the story of high-speed computer trading, which has been percolating all summer —  a smart and timely take on the one-year anniversary of the financial collapse.

Mediaite Grade (A-): Visually, the cover’s play with font and depth is sharp; the psuedo-pyramid of faces at the bottom, illuminated by the chilling glow of computer screens, is electric. Pick up Forbes for a smart, forward-looking take on the financial world, one year after the collapse.

It’s a scary time for BusinessWeek. People are talking about buying the magazine for $1 . We wanted this cover to be a ray of light for the floundering title. Though cheap, spray-painting a gun gold and pasting it on the cover, wasn’t exactly the sizzle or pop we were hoping for.

Mediaite Grade (C+): We wonder, is there a BusinessWeek intern walking around somewhere with gold spray paint on his hands? We like the idea of putting a gun on the cover, but this one looks too fake, too gold. And the yellow at the top of the cover doesn’t exactly complement the gold below (not even yellow could make the “America’s Manufacturing Crisis” banner exciting). Add BusinessWeek‘s big, red, blocky masthead to the mix and watch the colors clash. Let’s see some hustle, BusinessWeek.

COVER WARS WINNER: Forbes nailed the one-year anniversary with a cover that subtly acknowledged the bench mark, but took the story in a new direction — the future of finance. And they had fun with the cover — not too conservative, not too boring, not too tacky. Take notes, BW, before you’re liquidated.

BusinessWeek‘s Jon Fine reports:

Given Bloomberg’s late entry into the fray—-its interest kindled quickly last week, and a coterie of its company executives just met with BusinessWeek management on Monday—it’s expected that the company will get an extra couple of days to perform due diligence and decide upon its bid. (Slightly extended deadlines are not wholly unusual in sales of media properties.) A spokeswoman for Bloomberg declined to comment, and a McGraw-Hill spokesman did not respond to multiple messages on Tuesday evening.

A bid is expected from private equity player OpenGate Capital, the recent buyer of TV Guide, though a spokeswoman for the company declined to comment. Executives for ZelnickMedia declined to comment, though I see that private-equity player as a likely bidder as well. The ultimate intentions of Platinum Equity and Fast Company owner Joe Mansueto, both of whom have participated in the process thus far, were opaque, at least to me, as of 10 PM Tuesday evening. (Platinum is chasing a possible deal for the Boston Globe, according to the Globe itself; a Platinum spokesman said the company does not comment on potential acquisitions.)

Bloomberg is acting much like a company intending to place a bid, but then the same was true about Bruce Wasserstein a few days ago. As (horn toot alert) first reported here earlier today, New York magazine owner and Lazard Chairman Wasserstein decided not to bid for BusinessWeek after what multiple executives described as weeks of intensive study of the magazine’s operations–which continued into early this week. He and his representatives arrived at the decision to forego a bid late last night. Warburg Pincus also elected not to bid, say executives familiar with the situation.

In the hard new priorities of news management, dwindling resources struggle to keep coverage alive on essential routine beats, while the public-interest side of the business — investigative journalism,  the very heart and soul of journalism — is being unforgivably squeezed in the face of fiscal realities.

So, how to pay for the vital probings on behalf of the entire polity, in this time of forced deprivation?  Philanthropy, perhaps?  The success of the pioneer ProPublica — the non-profit independent newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, with “moral force” — bodes well.

Launched last year, ProPublica is funded by a multi-year, $10 million budget from the Herbert and Marion Sandler Foundation, supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and the Kohlberg Foundation, with pro bono counsel support from Cleary Gottlieb and Davis Wright Tremaine. It is led by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Stephen Engelberg, former  managing editor of the Portland Oregonian and investigative editor of the New York Times. Their staff consists of  32 top-flight journalists (eight of them winners of Pulitzers), individually and collectively way beyond the pay scales of the publications they seek to serve. They range wide over their specialties, find leads, investigate, research, and produce original stories — which they offer exclusively, free, to the local news organizations where they will have the most impact.

From a standing start, they have done a spectacular job. ProPublica has already provided more than 40 publishing partners with original  reports of consequence.  One on the environmental damage caused by hydrofracking — the practice of injecting toxic fluids underground in the process of natural gas drilling — was picked up by the Albany Times-Union, Business Week, the Denver Post, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The story has touched off a fierce debate in Congress over  extension of  the extraordinary legal exemption for the practice.

Another, on California’s failure to check the criminal backgrounds  of 195,000 health-care professionals, published in the Los Angeles Times, prompted the state Department of Consumer Affairs to add 104,000  professionals from all levels of medical care — doctors, dentists, psychiatric technicians — to that total, and spurred the state into remedial action. ProPublica’s ongoing investigative efforts into the California health care system this week resulted in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger replacing most of the State Nursing Board.

Elsewhere in the country, ProPublica posted an update on its earlier story published in The Nation about vigilantism in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina:  new video footage has surfaced about one of the murders, in which the police may have been involved.

So far, ProPublica has brought more than 50 similar heretofore secret stories into public view in its first year in business. And counting.

And, apparently, just in time. “We don’t pretend to be a substitute for all the resources that are being lost,” says Dick Tofel, ProPublica’s general manager from its inception. “Many, many millions of dollars, many scores of people. It’s a national tragedy. We can’t fix that by ourselves, but we can push back, and perhaps ultimately serve as one model  for how you can build a non-profit news organization that may be replicable, for instance, at the local or regional level around the country.”

Tofel’s sense of urgency comes from what he perceives to be the core of “investigative journalism,” as he defines it: “It is the stories that someone in some position of power wants to keep secret. What investigative journalism is about is getting those stories that people in some position of power want to keep from being told. If one can accept that definition, then I think one can quickly understand why it is a very important function of self government.”

Tofel cites David Simon, former journalist and creator of The Wire on HBO, whose comments while testifying before Congress earlier this year at the “Future of Journalism” hearing echoed around the industry:  “The next 10 or 15 years in this country are going to be a halcyon era for state and local political corruption.“

Well, not if ProPublica can help it. Tofel, Steiger and Engelberg aim to be around for those 10 to 15 years, and then some. “We all agree it’s an integrated whole: If you just do great content it’s not enough; if you just have great staff it’s not enough; if you just have distribution it’s not enough,” says Tofel. “It’s a system you need to build; it’s a machine you need to construct, and then to maintain on the fly.”

To that end, they are building it. First priority:  recruit and retain a first-rate staff.  (“Very pleased about that,” says Tofel. “Not 100 percent done, but close.”) Indeed: Pro Publica just added Jesse Eisinger, formerlyof Portfolio and the Wall Street Journal, and this past spring added online and organizing savvy with Amanda Michel, the former director of “Off The Bus,” the Huffington Post’s citizen journalism arm. Second priority: Do great work. Tofel is modest (“I think we’ve started to do some, but we need to do years of it  before people can start assessing”), but the California State Nursing Board might beg to differ.  Third: Distribute effectively. No need for modesty there. Says Tofel:  “We’ve already proven that.”

With work of such incredible public value, it seems almost depressing that it traditional business models can’t support it. But, says Tofel, that’s why now is the time to shake things up. “I think we’re at a moment of cataclysmic change here; there’s a need for a lot of real experimentation,” he says. “I do think that philanthropy can catalyze a lot of experimentation that needs to be done. We are about to get more systematic about what a sustainable long-term funding model would look like and go out to try to build one. I have more questions than answers about that, very honestly. I don’t have answers.  All I will tell you is that we’ve been publishing just a year now, and I think this is the next big thing for us to do.”

Like the rest of their investigations, we look forward to the results.

Bill Rappleye has spent the last 60-plus years in journalism. Read more about him here.