Categories: OLD Media Moves

Bloomberg’s Micklethwait: People will pay for high-end news

John Micklethwait

Ken Moriyasu of Nikkei Asian Review interviewed Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait about the company’s recent decision to erect a paywall.

Moriyasu writes, “‘People will pay for news, especially at the high end,’ Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait said in a wide-ranging interview with Nikkei Asian Review and a group of other international news organizations. ‘Today, in an age when your business can be disrupted by people living miles away, knowing what is happening everywhere is fantastically valuable.’

“The London-born former editor of The Economist noted that people are increasingly interested in stories related to finance, business and technology. ‘If you look at the heroes of the modern age, and the villains, a lot of them tend to come from finance and business. People think Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk are fantastic. At the same time, people can hate bankers.’

“Bloomberg is encouraged, he said, to see a new trend of younger people willing to pay for trustworthy news, not only because of the spread of fake news, but due to their familiarity with ‘paying for apps such as Netflix and Spotify.'”

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.

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