Bloomberg plans to rule the news world
Bloomberg article here.
We want to be the world’s most influential news organization,” says Mr. Lack, who oversees Bloomberg’s television, radio and dot-com endeavors.
Very clear. The most influential. On the planet.
It’s a goal several other Bloomberg executives have already mentioned to a pair of visitors. And when Mr. Lack, 62, a former head of NBC News, hears his guests wonder if something funny is in his company’s coffee — a special sauce that keeps all Bloombergians marching so efficiently and effectively to the same tune — he looks a tad chagrined.
“Oh, my! I don’t want to sound as if I’m on message,” he says, laughing apprehensively while also sending a “help me” look to a Bloomberg spokeswoman nearby.
These days, truth be told, the entire company is on message. That’s because the data behemoth that Michael R. Bloomberg created and named after himself in 1981, long before he became mayor of New York, finally has the reach, resources and appetites to try snaring the mantle of Most Influential — at least in the rarefied world of business news.
After years of being an underdog pushing its troops to be better and faster, Bloomberg now has an upper hand. Publishing giants like Condé Nast, Time Inc. and The New York Times, with their veteran scribes and rich histories, have laid off people and scaled back. Bloomberg may lack the pedigree and gloss of some of its rivals, but it has one thing they don’t right now: money to throw around.
This year alone, Bloomberg, deploying the cash spouting from its data business, has recruited refugees from The Wall Street Journal and Fortune and opened bureaus in places like Ecuador and Abu Dhabi. Its editorial staff (which includes radio, TV and Web site workers) now numbers 2,200, compared with 1,250 journalists at The Times and 1,900 at Dow Jones (a figure that includes the newswires and the Journal staff).
When the 80-year-old BusinessWeek went on the block, Bloomberg opened its wallet and snatched it away from circling private equity firms in October for just $5 million in cash — a relatively small sum that still represents a big change. For the last decade, Bloomberg has barely bothered to venture outside the realm of high finance; its news was produced to help subscribers to its terminals make more money for themselves.
With BusinessWeek, likely to be renamed Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the company is setting its sights on a much broader audience. That includes Main Street readers and, much more important for Bloomberg, senior executives, government leaders and other global movers and shakers. It’s also trying to revamp its Web site and television programming — long neglected inside the company — into services that appeal to people who don’t trade securities for a living.
At a time when most media companies can barely pay for cake at going-away parties, Bloomberg appears to be rolling in dough.
Its headquarters, on the East Side, has the crystalline look and smooth textures of an airport terminal from the 22nd century. It has sleek, elegantly curved glass walls, outdoor patios, art installations hanging over escalators, fish tanks filled with exotic species and digital screens overhead that display the weather — with lightning flashes — and trading levels for the Nasdaq. Employees snack on free kiwis and pomegranates and gulp fancy sodas. The company even employs full-time bathroom attendants to wipe up errant droplets of water on the countertops.
Although Bloomberg, which is privately held, draws attention for its media ambitions, a vast majority of the company’s projected $6.3 billion in revenue — and nearly all of its profit — derives from financial information systems. These software packages, still known as “terminals” from when Bloomberg made the hardware, can be found on virtually all Wall Street trading desks, housing huge amounts of data and analytics, from price quotations for fixed-income and derivative products to complex risk analysis — making Bloomberg a live-on-Wall-Street, die-on-Wall-Street enterprise.
During the financial boom of the last two decades, Bloomberg terminals flew out the door. This year, for the first time in the company’s history, the number of installed terminals will fall, albeit modestly. Some analysts wonder whether the company’s fast-growth days could be behind it, spurring it to seek new ways to make money on Wall Street while upping the ante in its media game.
The time has come, company officials say, to move beyond a hard-core clientele of financial information hounds.
“We need a broader audience,” says Daniel L. Doctoroff, Bloomberg’s president. “The history of this company is you do the counterintuitive, countercyclical thing. It’s part of our DNA.”
We want to be the world’s most influential news organization,” says Mr. Lack, who oversees Bloomberg’s television, radio and dot-com endeavors.
Very clear. The most influential. On the planet.
It’s a goal several other Bloomberg executives have already mentioned to a pair of visitors. And when Mr. Lack, 62, a former head of NBC News, hears his guests wonder if something funny is in his company’s coffee — a special sauce that keeps all Bloombergians marching so efficiently and effectively to the same tune — he looks a tad chagrined.
“Oh, my! I don’t want to sound as if I’m on message,” he says, laughing apprehensively while also sending a “help me” look to a Bloomberg spokeswoman nearby.
These days, truth be told, the entire company is on message. That’s because the data behemoth that Michael R. Bloomberg created and named after himself in 1981, long before he became mayor of New York, finally has the reach, resources and appetites to try snaring the mantle of Most Influential — at least in the rarefied world of business news.
After years of being an underdog pushing its troops to be better and faster, Bloomberg now has an upper hand. Publishing giants like Condé Nast, Time Inc. and The New York Times, with their veteran scribes and rich histories, have laid off people and scaled back. Bloomberg may lack the pedigree and gloss of some of its rivals, but it has one thing they don’t right now: money to throw around.
This year alone, Bloomberg, deploying the cash spouting from its data business, has recruited refugees from The Wall Street Journal and Fortune and opened bureaus in places like Ecuador and Abu Dhabi. Its editorial staff (which includes radio, TV and Web site workers) now numbers 2,200, compared with 1,250 journalists at The Times and 1,900 at Dow Jones (a figure that includes the newswires and the Journal staff).
When the 80-year-old BusinessWeek went on the block, Bloomberg opened its wallet and snatched it away from circling private equity firms in October for just $5 million in cash — a relatively small sum that still represents a big change. For the last decade, Bloomberg has barely bothered to venture outside the realm of high finance; its news was produced to help subscribers to its terminals make more money for themselves.
With BusinessWeek, likely to be renamed Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the company is setting its sights on a much broader audience. That includes Main Street readers and, much more important for Bloomberg, senior executives, government leaders and other global movers and shakers. It’s also trying to revamp its Web site and television programming — long neglected inside the company — into services that appeal to people who don’t trade securities for a living.
At a time when most media companies can barely pay for cake at going-away parties, Bloomberg appears to be rolling in dough.
Its headquarters, on the East Side, has the crystalline look and smooth textures of an airport terminal from the 22nd century. It has sleek, elegantly curved glass walls, outdoor patios, art installations hanging over escalators, fish tanks filled with exotic species and digital screens overhead that display the weather — with lightning flashes — and trading levels for the Nasdaq. Employees snack on free kiwis and pomegranates and gulp fancy sodas. The company even employs full-time bathroom attendants to wipe up errant droplets of water on the countertops.
Although Bloomberg, which is privately held, draws attention for its media ambitions, a vast majority of the company’s projected $6.3 billion in revenue — and nearly all of its profit — derives from financial information systems. These software packages, still known as “terminals” from when Bloomberg made the hardware, can be found on virtually all Wall Street trading desks, housing huge amounts of data and analytics, from price quotations for fixed-income and derivative products to complex risk analysis — making Bloomberg a live-on-Wall-Street, die-on-Wall-Street enterprise.
During the financial boom of the last two decades, Bloomberg terminals flew out the door. This year, for the first time in the company’s history, the number of installed terminals will fall, albeit modestly. Some analysts wonder whether the company’s fast-growth days could be behind it, spurring it to seek new ways to make money on Wall Street while upping the ante in its media game.
The time has come, company officials say, to move beyond a hard-core clientele of financial information hounds.
“We need a broader audience,” says Daniel L. Doctoroff, Bloomberg’s president. “The history of this company is you do the counterintuitive, countercyclical thing. It’s part of our DNA.”
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