Categories: OLD Media Moves

Bloomberg site aims to disrupt the general business news category

Ken Doctor of Capital New York analyzed the launch of the new Bloomberg news website and spoke with Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith, who wants it to disrupt the general business news category.

Doctor writes, “We can divide the potential Bloomberg disruptees into two groups.

“First, there are the trusted, legacy business news sources, like Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Fortune and The Financial Times (which isn’t included in Comscore’s numbers). While Reuters showed a good year-over-year gain of 38 percent, Dow Jones managed just a 3 percent increase. Those compare to Bloomberg’s 14 percent growth in unique visitors.

“Second, there are popular news sites. What they may lack in gravitas, they make up with great volumes of content of sometimes uneven quality: hard-to-resist listicles and various lures of the digitally native. Put the top three sites on the top of this list: Yahoo Finance (down 17 percent year-over-year in unique visitors), Forbes Digital (up 12 percent) and Business Insider, up an astounding, venture-capital-drawing 48 percent.

“With Bloomberg TV — now incorporated into the new Bloomberg.com — the company has long produced video and as such hopes to disrupt CNBC, which had a great growth year (up 83 percent in unique visitors, the greatest growth rate among the top 25) and CNN Money.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

View Comments

  • I think in all honestly the chances of disrupting Bloomberg are sort of like the chances of bankrupting the New York Times a la 1965 - extremely unlikely. While the people are objectionable, you cannot deny the place is outstanding; journalism standards are THE most rigidly upheld of all news organisations, the place is swarming with so many winners you'll feel like you are wasting everyone's time and the technology there until you've actually broken a dozen or more stories ... it's awash with cash and could frankly buy BI or any other "business intelligence" or "big data" start-up out there. That's not to say that there aren't entrepreneurs who haven't done well, but comparing anyone or any organisation to Bloomberg is just ... frankly it's unrealistic. It'll be a while yet before the Bloomberg juggernaut slows down even a little ...

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