Bloomberg ups percentage of female guest, journalist appearances on TV and in stories

Women represent 34 percent of the total number of Bloomberg journalists interviewed on Bloomberg Television, up from 28 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to numbers released Tuesday by the company.

The short-term goal is to reach 50 percent.

In addition, Bloomberg Television’s female external guests now represent 15 percent of those interviewed, up from 10 percent at the beginning of the year. The short-term goal is to reach 30 percent.

In the first quarter of this year, women represented roughly 2 percent of sources quoted or cited in Bloomberg stories running on our TOP, or front, pages.  In the most recent month of tracking, they now represent 6.2 percent.

Laura Zelenko, Bloomberg News’ senior executive editor for diversity, talent, standards and training, wrote:

We enhanced our publishing tool to allow editors to tag stories that quote women.  Not only does this enable us to count these stories, our newsroom can reference them to find relevant sources not only for guests on Bloomberg Television or Bloomberg radio, but also for panels at our Bloomberg Live events.  And we’ve set a new policy that states Bloomberg journalists can only join panels where there is gender diversity.

We’re proactively trying to address the challenge of promoting more expert women commentators, and ultimately, other diverse voices as well. By expanding the media training, we’re also finding welcome support among companies that are actively trying to promote their own women executives — new newsmakers whose perspectives until now have been underrepresented.

Read more here.