Categories: OLD Media Moves

Bloomberg’s Smith: Content will still go on terminal first

Joe Pompeo of Capital New York got a partial transcript from a town hall meeting last week at Bloomberg led by Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith and Bloomberg Businessweek editor in chief Josh Tyrangiel where the two discussed the company’s future.

Here is an excerpt:

“First of all, what’s crystal clear to all of us in media,” said Smith, is “the primary central importance of the terminal business, and the role the media group has to play is in support of the terminal business. All of the content we’ll be producing with these brands, all of it will be going to the terminal first, so there’ll be a significant time delay.
“And as these brands frankly become more influential and more pronounced, the opportunity for news-making and news-breaking, that is, market-moving, which is really a core value form a news perspective to a terminal customer, is going to increase. … Large business news stories are often given or handed to the consumer media outlets that often have the largest reach in a particular area. Think of the politics landscape. In an election year, politics content is sky high on the terminal, With Heilemann and Halperin, you can imagine the benefit.”
It’s all about achieving a “sense of humanness,” said Zazie Lucke, head of global advertiser marketing.
“Bloomberg has been criticized in the past for being an unapproachable brand, with the exception of Bloomberg Businessweek, which can be kind of ‘fuck you’ at times,” she said. “It has a great personality to it. … We want to achieve a level of humanity.”

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tim says:
July 4, 2014 at 11:14 am
Politics can be very high on the Bberg terminal, but the terminal is still only on about 400,000 desks or maybe fewer, and half of them are outside the US. So, sorry Justin, to a political newsmaker talking to Bloomberg for the terminal is still the equivalent of talking to a much smarter than average reporter for the Bergen Record. For someone who wants to reach donors or other insiders, different story. but no one who wants to reach citizens is going to bloomberg. star reporters like those he cites may get such stories based on their own efforts, networks and reputations, but that is a different story. the only contribution the terminal makes to that is funding the paychecks that can convince people like those to give Bberg some (not all) of their time.