Bloomberg works with Postlight to annotate news

Benjamin Mullin of The Poynter Institute writes about how Bloomberg has worked with Postlight to provide annotated information in stories.

Mullin writes, “Bloomberg — with its ever-present emphasis on speed — thinks there should be a better way. So, the financial news colossus has teamed up with Postlight, the digital studio co-founded by journalist and programmer Paul Ford, to create a tool that aims to solve that problem.

“The pair began working together after Bloomberg digital boss Scott Havens attended a Postlight Labs event, said Michael Shane, the global head of digital innovation at Bloomberg. Employees at both agencies began brainstorming ideas for a potential shared project and they eventually decided to find something that played to their respective strengths.

“‘What technology does Postlight have that is special and powerful and great?’ Shane said. ‘What technology does Bloomberg have that is also special and powerful…and what product comes out when you smush them together?’

“They settled on the idea of providing instant context and data in stories. Bloomberg, with its terminal business, has tons of data. Postlight has Mercury, a web parser that scans and reformats text. Together, they could create an application that scans news articles for newsmakers (people, companies, institutions) and serves up financial data around them.

“Now, users who download the Bloomberg Lens chrome extension (or Bloomberg’s iOS app for consumers) can scan any news story on any website and get additional context on the publicly traded companies and individuals that are mentioned in the article. This is particularly useful, they said, for in-depth magazine articles that are years old and may be lacking the latest financial information.”

Read more here.