Reports: McGraw-Hill to Hawk BusinessWeek

McGraw-Hill(MHP Quote) has reportedly put its BusinessWeek magazine on the auction block, though whether anyone will show up, let alone raise a paddle, is an open question.

The weekly slick, which competes mostly with privately held Forbes and Time Warner's(TWX Quote) Time Inc.'s Fortune, saw its ad revenue fall 30% in the most recent quarter. Meanwhile, its move into the digital arena has been inconsistent at best, with two major overhauls of its web offerings in the last two years.

McGraw-Hill's media business as a whole, which includes BusinessWeek as well as J.D. Power & Associates, has been a drag on the company's bottom line. In the most recent quarter, operating profit at the unit tumbled 76%. The parent company's earnings, meanwhile, declined by 22%.

McGraw-Hill will use long-time advisor Evercore Partners(EVR Quote) to shop the title, according to a Bloomberg item, which cited a single source "close to the situation." Evercore, a boutique investment bank run by M&A maven Roger Altman, also advised McGraw-Hill on its 2005 purchase of market-research firm J.D. Power & Associates.

Speculation about McGraw-Hill's plans to sell have been rampant in recent weeks. The list of purported buyers has been both short and obvious: Bloomberg itself, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.'s(NWS Quote) Dow Jones.

Much like the Washington Post Co.(WPO Quote) (whose flagship newspaper brings in a minority of the company's business), McGraw-Hill has moved largely away from journalism and into such fields as textbook publishing and financial-products ratings (it also owns Standard & Poor's).

McGraw-Hill shares were trading midday Monday at $29.93, down 15 cents, on volume of about 600,000 shares. Average daily turnover is 2.7 million.