Pearlstine to Join Bloomberg

The private-equity industry seems to have lost its luster for Norman Pearlstine, the former editor-in-chief of Time magazine.

Pearlstine, now an advisor to the high-powered leveraged buyout firm, The Carlyle Group, said Monday he's headed back to the media, where he'll be joining Bloomberg in the newly created position of chief content officer.

Pearlstine, who was once the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, left journalism under intense public criticism after he chose to turn over the notes of Time reporter Matt Cooper to the independent prosecutor investigating the outing of Valerie Plame as a covert agent of the CIA.

His decision, made in consultation with then-Time Warner (TWX Quote) CEO Dick Parsons, conflicted with the position taken by The New York Times(NYT Quote), which backed reporter Judith Miller's decision to defy the subpoena and serve a jail term.

Pearlstine's move also comes as the private-equity industry struggles to weather the credit storm on Wall Street. Shares of the Carlyle Group's publicly-traded counterpart, The Blackstone Group (BX Quote), are down about 33% since its IPO last summer.