Joe Pompeo of Capital New York attended a panel on Monday morning where Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith talked about the issues the company faces in expanding its footprint.
Pompeo writes, “Smith is in the process of developing a suite of new cross-platform journalism brands for the financial news and information company Bloomberg L.P. The idea is to scale the company’s influence outside of the Wall Street world, which nonetheless accounts for the lion’s share of Bloomberg L.P.’s profits through the sale of astronomically priced data terminals. The roll-out begins Oct. 6 with the launch of a politics website and TV show helmed by Game Change authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.
“But Smith’s strategy, which has been unfolding for the past year, has run into a few speed bumps, and there are whispers that it’s been hard for him to get certain things done given Bloomberg’s lumbering, bureaucratic structure. Aside from Bloomberg Politics, there are no firm launch dates or details for any of the other offerings the media group has in the pipeline, including digitally-oriented franchises covering tech and luxury. Bloomberg Media Group also encompassses Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Radio and several magazines.
“Another challenge has been injecting a start-up mentality into the bloodstream of a legacy company.
“‘Our mission is to hire the entrepreneurs,’ said Smith, ‘and most of the entrepreneurs, frankly, are much more interested in being downtown and working collaboratively in small groups of six or eight’ as opposed to ‘the notion of coming up to a large organization that has 17,000 employees.'”
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