Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider profiles and interviews Bloomberg Television’s Stephanie Ruhle, who left Wall Street last month to join the financial TV operation of Bloomberg.
Weisenthal writes, “She’s been at the network for just over a month, and in that short time it’s become clear that she’s the most important new name in financial television. While there have been plenty of folks on TV who are ex-Wall Street, there aren’t many who bring the metabolism and perspective of the trading floor to the screen, like Ruhle.
“Earlier this week we caught up with Ruhle at the Bloomberg offices to talk about TV journalism, the future of Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street, derivatives, and making huge career switches.
“We were particularly fascinated to get a discussion of financial TV from someone whose background is on the trading floor, and what frustrations they had about it:
“So my complaint had been — especially during the crisis, I often felt like, do people in business news realize the weight their voice carries? And I think you hold that with a big responsibility. Here I’m really impressed with the integrity. I think it’s easy to get people to hear your voice if you’re saying a splashy headline. And I can even see myself—because when you’re not saying it on TV, if you’re just saying it amongst your friends, you can say something big and bold, because it doesn’t carry any weight. You’re sitting at a dinner table or you’re talking on a trading floor. When you say something on TV, you better be damn well sure what you’re saying is fact, because you could move a market.”
