MediaFile

McGraw-Hill set Tuesday as the due date for bids for the ailing BusinessWeek magazine, and at least as of 7:30 pm eastern time, nothing at all has happened. Since this is one of those stories where I’ve encountered absolutely no fruitful sources, I’ve relied on reading the reports of other people.

So what’s going to happen to the business news weekly? Let’s catch up with the latest:

It will not go to Lazard chief Bruce Wasserstein. The owner of New York magazine has enough to deal with in the slumping publishing world already, so he’s gone, reports BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine.

Fine himself is bowing out of the action after presenting us with most of it. He and wife Laurel Touby (a media maven in her own right) are taking a six-month sabbatical to do more fun things in other parts of the world.

Bloomberg LP remains interested, along with various other bidders, say various media reports. As you might expect, no one there is talking to us evil arch-rivals at Reuters. I hear from Bloomberg journalists that no one there is talking to them either. Too bad, because it was Bloomberg journalist Greg Bensinger who helped break the story. (And so much the worse, as Bensinger is on honeymoon at the moment.)

Matt Winkler is more than the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg’s news operation; he is its creator and keystone, and largely responsible for its hard-charging, hard-working work ethic that has been described by nearly everyone who writes about the business news wire as “take-no-prisoners.” Still, even top editors like to take a break every now and again.

Winkler, who started Bloomberg LP’s news operation nearly two decades ago, is going to step back from some of his day-to-day duties. This comes after Bloomberg earlier this month said it would create several new units as part of a reorganization that included a shuffling of top management. That featured Winkler losing control of the TV, Internet and radio operations at Bloomberg but retaining control of print.

The company last month also was expected to offer more flexible work hours to its employees, a sign that it was responding to concerns among some workers that the kitchen was often too hot to cook in.

Big changes are underway at Bloomberg LP, both in the news division and the way the company is structured.

As we reported on Wednesday, the company’s multimedia operations will be set up as a new division, while a new incubator shop called Bloomberg Ventures will be run by the company’s former CEO and current sales chief, Lex Fenwick (see this piece for Fenwick’s insights). Bloomberg also is changing the way its sales teams hawk its news, data and financial products.

What does it all mean? From talking to around a dozen employees, we determined that it’s about shaking up the management a bit and consolidating power under the company’s two top executives, Dan Doctoroff and Peter Grauer. (Who shows up in Ian Austen’s New York Times story from last month about the rivalry between Bloomberg and this blog’s parent company, Thomson Reuters Corp.)