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Bloomberg News: A Modest Strategy to Rule the World

nytimes.com

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Re: Bloomberg News: A Modest Strategy to Rule the World

#4

Post by jakarta »

wglb wrote: post #2

So does this suggest that news organizations are not self supporting, that is, Bloomberg's fees from the financial data seem to support the news organization.

I think that as it stands, this is the reality. The Washington Post is similar in that their Kaplan business supports the newsroom.

What I think may happen though, is that players like WaPo and Bloomberg will ultimately emerge with profitable news businesses because competitors will go out of businesses and their assets will be able to be picked up at fire sale prices and benefit from a lack of competition.

Re: Bloomberg News: A Modest Strategy to Rule the World

#5

Post by gaius »

wglb wrote: post #2

So does this suggest that news organizations are not self supporting, that is, Bloomberg's fees from the financial data seem to support the news organization.

Yes this is true of Reuters as well. Which is fine; the point of the news from the POV of the people paying for the service is to inform their trading decisions.

Re: Bloomberg News: A Modest Strategy to Rule the World

#7

Post by MikeCapone »

MikeCapone wrote: post #6

Now if only they could invest some of that money into a better website...

Looks like the article addresses this point:

"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."

Re: Bloomberg News: A Modest Strategy to Rule the World

#8

Post by JimmyL »

Bloomberg's offices are, depending on who you ask, either fantastic or terrible.

Yes, they've got a bunch of art and screens everywhere (including a curved escalator, which I had never seen before I went there). Yes, there are some great free snacks. Yes, there is some nice public art, and a decent corporate dining room.

On the other hand, it's still somewhat of a sweatshop. The whole office is open plan - the highest dividers between workstations rise about seven inches above desk-level and louder than they describe it. The whole building is covered in monitors that display, in real-time, information about how terminal sales are going. When you pull up an employee's internal profile page (which is accessible to anyone within the company), it lists what time you badged in and out for the past week.

Re: Bloomberg News: A Modest Strategy to Rule the World

#9

Post by ig1 »

JimmyL wrote: post #8

Bloomberg's offices are, depending on who you ask, either fantastic or terrible. Yes, they've got a bunch of art and screens everywhere (including a curved escalator, which I had never seen before I went there). Yes, there are some great free snacks. Yes, there is some nice public art, and a decent corporate dining room. On the other hand, it's still somewhat of a sweatshop. The whole office is open plan - the highes…

The layout of the office isn't significantly different to what you'll find at any modern investment bank, open plan offices are the norm in the industry. So much so that when they filmed the movie "A Good Year" the scenes of a trading floor were actually filmed in a Bloomberg office rather than at a bank.

Re: Bloomberg News: A Modest Strategy to Rule the World

#10

Post by ctkrohn »

MikeCapone wrote: post #6

Now if only they could invest some of that money into a better website...

Or decent keyboards for their terminals. The new ones are glorified laptop keyboards, complete with non-standard key layout and a really shallow keystroke. And the fingerprint readers still break all the time. If you're selling software that costs $25k/yr, the least you can do is provide a decent keyboard.
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