Bloomberg increases percentage of women in content, expands training

The percentage of women guests brought in as expert commentators on Bloomberg Television has climbed to 18 percent in the most recent month, up from 10 percent at the start of 2018, according to data released by the media organization on Monday.

In addition, the percentage of stories that quote or cite a woman expert on Bloomberg’s TOP, or front, pages has increased to almost 10 percent from about 2.5 percent in March and is growing at an average pace of 13 percent a week.

Bloomberg began a push to increase the number of women in its content earlier this year and as part of that effort began a pilot program to train more women for media appearances. That training has occurred in New York, London, Toronto, and Hong Kong.

On Monday, the company said it would expand that training next year to Sydney, Mumbai, Dubai and San Francisco.

Laura Zelenko, Bloomberg’s senior executive editor for diversity, talent, standards and training, spoke about the effort Monday at The Conference Board’s West Coast Diversity & Inclusion Conference in San Francisco.

“Diversity both internally and externally, from who reports, writes and edits the stories to the outside sources we choose to interview and bring on Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg Radio, is imperative to staying competitive today, for making sure we’re finding the right, most important stories to tell, and for ensuring what we report and write is always accurate, fair and balanced,” she said.

Bloomberg News’ global database of women experts has quadrupled this year to more than 2,300 names.

“Our work is far from finished. What we can’t do is lose momentum or weaken the urgency,” Zelenko added.

“From what we’ve learned, there are some best practices that can be replicated industry to industry. On the one hand, we need to create processes that can be measured, with tracking tools and metrics to review. On the other, these efforts must be carried out simultaneously with cultural change to truly ensure durable impact.”