A "cover story" you'll love reading

Bloomberg Businessweek is ostensibly a publication meant for a business audience, but I have found in almost every issue a plethora of interesting and well-written features that can be appreciated and enjoyed by the general public too — here's one and here's another.

Many months ago the magazine changed certain aspects of the design and layout and began including a snippet of a column on how the cover gets made. Called "Cover Trail", the column gives us a little bit of insight into the workings of the minds of those who decide what the reader gets to see up-front. Far from being a banal discussion, the content of "Cover Trail" is often both intelligent and witty at the same time.

Sample this "Cover Trail" from the issue of March 10-16:

HOW THE COVER GETS MADE

"We need the world, with lots of arrows pointing to the world's trouble spots, areas that cause concern for American foreign policy."

"So, off the top of my head: Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, North Korea, Palestine, Israel, Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan. There are more, you know. A lot more."

"Could we just highlight areas of the world that aren't problematic for American foreign policy?"

"So just one big arrow pointing to moose people in Canada?"

"Don't joke about Canada or its mooses. Her frosty attitude is a constant source of strength to me in these long days of winter."

"Yeah. Me, too. By the way — do you ever get the feeling that the world's problems never want to be solved and we're all just in a self-supporting cycle of persistent delusion, enabled by a narcissistic impulse to impose incompatible ideologies on our neighbors for a type of political gamesmanship that no one believes in anymore? Our leaders all acting under some imagined oppositional moral pretense when all..."

"Just design the cover."
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"And make it look dumb."
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I just love the snap! crackle! pop! flow of that conversation. To read more "Cover Trail" columns, go here.

Incidentally, Commitscion David George (Class of 2005) is deputy editor of the Middle East edition of Bloomberg Businessweek. He has promised to give us his input on how his edition puts the cover together.

Speaking of covers, production journalists can learn a lot from reading the views of Fortune India editor D.N. Mukerjea on why good ideas and good writing need to be backed up by good design. And here's New York Times editor Bill Keller explaining how one of the world's great newspapers chooses stories for Page 1. Another good read!

When you have two hours to shoot ace director James Cameron...

...for a National Geographic magazine cover, how do you do it?

This is how Marco Grob did it:

Read up on the fascinating details here: "Behind the Cover: June 2013".

• MORE FROM THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC:

A tribute to an amazing photo editor

Photography buffs will go nuts when they read these tips on the NatGeo website

How to get people to read — and appreciate — your Facebook posts

PLUS: Check out the National Geographic style guide, which comes highly recommended by  Mark Nichol, editor of the Daily Writing Tips blog: "This free online resource from the National Geographic Society doesn’t show up high in search rankings, but it’s an excellent resource. (And, seriously, have you ever seen a clumsy sentence, a grammatical error, or even a typo in National Geographic?) Unusually terse but clear entries are organised alphabetically, and the site includes a directory of new and altered entries and, especially helpful, one of terms and rules that contradict other authoritative resources or are exceptions to the norm."

Do you find this magazine cover offensive?

Or do you think it is a clever way to tell a story about the merger of two major airline companies in the US?

When Bloomberg Businessweek used this composite image on the cover of its February 6 issue with the headline "Let's Get It On", it probably did not figure on the virulent reaction from some readers.

Here are some of the "negative" letters the magazine printed in the February 16 issue:

• Offensive … displeasing … distasteful … indecent … abominable … obscene … objectionable … that’s what I have to say about your Feb. 6-12 cover. You should be ashamed.

• I think you have a sharp magazine with good writing, making what is (for me) a boring subject — business — actually interesting and understandable. But I object to your Feb. 6-12 cover, the one with a Continental plane “getting it on” with a United plane. Couldn’t you have made a point about an airline merger without descending into base sexual imagery?

• Your Feb. 6-12 cover page was in extremely poor taste. You made it even worse with the headline “Let’s Get It On.” Surely you could have described the business events going on between Continental and United in a better fashion, and not by showing two planes having sex with each other on the cover of an important business magazine.

• Get It On, Love Built to Last, Friends with Benefits, Exchange Vows, Home Run: Your cover page is so subtle it should have a condom over the dominant top plane (should be United) and a diaphragm shield inside the tail of the submissive bottom one (should be Continental). You will lose several subscriptions over portraying the sacred marriage of two companies as just a long mile-high f – – k. Who was the genius who sent this around legal without thinking? For April 1, maybe, but not right after the holy days!

Of course, there was some positive reaction, too:

• Got to love last week’s cover: A Continental plane mounting a United plane with the caption, “Let’s Get It On”! On the same page, you talk about Facebook having “friends with benefits.” It shows that business has great humor. LMAO! Framing this cover. Thanks.

For the record, I did not even think this cover had anything to do with sexual imagery. One reason for that might be because I did not get the significance of the headline accompanying the image (did you?). "Let's Get It On" seemed to indicate to me that it was time to party, now that the world's largest airline had been formed. And without a second thought I turned the cover page and began reading the magazine. It's only when I read the letters in the February 16 issue that I did the mental equivalent of a double take.

You can read the other letters here: Feedback.

Also read: "Good ideas and good writing need to be backed up by good design".