Bloomberg now breaking stories at record speed

Ryan Tate of Gawker gets to the bottom of how Bloomberg News broke more than 13,000 stories in the first three months of the year — more than it broke for all of 2008.

First, Tate quotes from an internal memo that states, “Competitors followed Bloomberg News stories more than 2,700 times — more than twice as often as in all of 2008({NI FOLLOW }. The Wall Street Journal alone cited us 235 times. The New York Times mentioned us 135 times. Reuters followed 520 times.”

Later, the memo states, “The 1,492 journalists at Bloomberg News broke more than 13,000 stories, almost three times the total for all of 2008. Our speed increased, too: Bloomberg News beat its main real-time competitor on more than 70 percent of all major stories, compared with 54 percent at the beginning of the year.”

The reason behind the large increases, Tate writes, is that “Our tipster believes the tags are applied more generously than last year, and Bloomberg’s stats bear this out: To triple ‘FIRSTs,’ reporters either worked three times harder this year — doubtful, given how intensely competitive Bloomberg’s culture has always been — or the tag is being applied more liberally.

“But editors who fudged the numbers may have burned themselves: Bloomberg, our tipster claims, will use Q1 2009 as a benchmark for future performance, rather than a period from 2008, as employees previously believed. If that’s true, the suspicious Q1 metrics will set a very difficult performance bar going forward.”

Read more here.