Last Friday Peter Kafka over at MediaMemo reported some details - and we picked it up—of ZelnickMedia’s bid for BusinessWeek, and if it was successful, it was supposedly planning to shut the print mag and gut the place down with content being fed in, to a large extent, by bid partner Thomson Reuters (NSDQ: TRIN). Turns out none of that is true, as reported, according to a source directly involved in the ZelnickMedia consortium. It had no plans of shutting down the magazine, only decreasing its frequency, much like what Fortune and Forbes have done. Also, Reuters was only supposed to be used for regulation stories, with a hands-off approach, not as involved as the story made it out to be. Also, no mass layoffs were planned, though of course the whole point was to make the place more efficient and cost effective.

Of course none of that matters now, since Zelnick’s group didn’t win the bid. But one conspiracy theory about the doomsday story: to make sure the BW staff feel better about Bloomberg, even if their new owners ends up gutting the place. Relative misery index might be lower that way.