Bloomberg working on new editorial product dubbed “First Word”

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Bloomberg News has assembled a team of editorial staffers to put together a new product scheduled to launch this summer, sources at the organization tell Talking Biz News.

The new service, called by one employee as a “wire within a wire,” is designed to compete against StreetAccount. Street Account is a service where writers use their market experience to report “only those stories that are new and material” to investors, according to its Web site.

One Bloomberg employee who has been told about the project, dubbed “First Word,” says that the plan is for the service to provide short stories about companies with fast analysis.

“So think of it like a company RSS feeder — you have certain tickers you’re looking at, you punch them in, and then there’s a window where every time an item pops up there’re a few, non-stupid grafs about it and why it’s important,” said the employee. “Seems like a good idea if you ask me.”

If that’s the case, it sounds a lot like StreetAccount, which says on its Web site that, “We filter the news to ensure that the reports we deliver are new and material, and then allow you to further filter the information using sophisticated portfolio and sector tools.” StreetAccount is headquartered in Jackson, Wyo., and maintains offices in Atlanta, Boston, London and Ridgewood, N.J.

The team is lead by Kevin Reynolds, a long-time Bloomberg employee who has led the headlines team. Another employee says that the First Word team will have approximately 18 employees.