Filed under: Products and services, News Corp’B’ (NWS), Media World, ThomsonCorp (TOC)
Who is the boss of Bloomberg News?
During my career there, there was no question that Matthew Winkler was in charge. My colleagues laughed hysterically when I told them I asked Winkler about his bow ties during my interview with him before I was hired. Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief is not known for his sense of humor. Good thing I didn’t bring up bow ties — which he wears each day — again.
That’s why I found the appointment of former Wall Street Journal top editor Norman Pearlstine as Bloomberg’s chief content officer so curious. Does this mean that Pearlstine, who was Winkler’s boss at the Journal, will supervise him again? What exactly does a chief content officer do that’s different than an editor-in-chief? I’m not sure of the answers to those questions and neither is the New York Times.
As the Times opines, “the move recommends that Bloomberg, whose fortunes have been buoyed by the selling of its hugely profitable data terminals to brokerage firms and investment banks, plans to expand the journalism side of its business.”
But I doubt that tells the whole story. Bloomberg has always seen news as a way to sell terminals. The company wants customers to rely on the company’s namesake machines for whatever information they need. Bloomberg can tell you about monetary policy, sports and culture. Customers don’t have to read the Times or The Wall Street Journal because Bloomberg will tell them what’s in the newspapers.
Bloomberg will need to shed some of its notorious bureaucracy in order to remain nimble to face the growing competition it faces from Thomson Reuters Corp. (NYSE: TRI) and News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), now the owner of Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., for the business news reader and advertiser.
There are already some signs that this is happening.
The service is ending the masochistic practice of “autopsying” stories to guess why The New York Times or some other major newspaper didn’t select them. For the most part, this was a masochistic exercise in futility. Winkler and his top managers took the practice very seriously and would hold reporters and editors accountable for not getting enough play in the Times.
Winkler and his underlings also used to tell employees that they could “always update” stories to make them better. Oftentimes, this would result in more than10 updates on major stories, such as mergers and acquisitions. The problem is that most readers would read three updates at most, but heaven help the reporter or editor that was too slow in getting out their updates.
Employees have grumbled about autopsies and updates for years, so you’ve to wonder whether more changes are in the works now that Pearlstine has joined the company.
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