Bloomberg News, which has rewarded its reporters with points in a system designed to encourage scoops, is now having a hard time getting its staff to be interested in longer, investigative pieces.
As a result, reports Gawker’s Ryan Tate, Bloomberg is now offering 10 points for such stories and revamping its overall point system.
Tate writes, “The below memo circulated by Bloomberg’s Projects and Investigations chief Amanda Bennett. The veteran business journalist has two Pulitzer Prizes under her belt, but these days has to bribe Bloomberg staffers into performing actual big-J Journalism for her by offering them these insidious ‘Breaking News Points:’
I hope you noticed an email I sent around a couple of weeks ago, naming the 400+ people who worked with our team over the past year.
Matt [Winkler] and I wanted to make sure that ALL our people get rewarded for major efforts like that. So working with Reto and Shelby, we came up with a metrics solution.
Anyone whose byline appears on a P&I project will get 10 breaking news points. We know this is a major commitment of time for people who are already are working so hard to break news and get scoops for our readers. This will be a way of recognizing the contributions of everyone at Bloomberg — not just the reporters, but their editors and team leaders as well — to these high-impact exclusive longer-term efforts.
We have some terrific projects in process. We’re eager for more, and looking forward to working with you.
“Exhibit C: We’re told that the Breaking News Points system has been sufficiently problematic that’s it’s being totally overhauled ‘yet again’ for 2010.”
Read more here.
