Ex-columnist Nocera sues Bloomberg alleging breach of contract

Former Bloomberg Opinion columnist Joe Nocera filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit Tuesday against Bloomberg, alleging that the company has denied him profits he is due for the TV series “The Shrink Next Door,” which is based on a podcast he put together, reports Sarah Ellison of The Washington Post.

Ellison reports, “Nocera’s lawsuit targets the proceeds from a 2019 deal that Bloomberg and Wondery struck with MRC Studios, the company that adapted the podcast into a television show. Under the agreement, Bloomberg and Wondery agreed to split any revenue generated from MRC on a 50-50 basis, according to the lawsuit. Bloomberg and Nocera in turn agreed to split “all revenue (other than service related fees)” earned by Bloomberg ‘in connection with the exploitation of the [podcast] by third parties …’ according to a contract referred to in the lawsuit that was reviewed by The Post; it states that Nocera would receive 100 percent of Bloomberg’s half of the initial option price for the series, which amounted to $125,000.

“But according to his lawsuit, when Nocera inquired with the company about his earnings from the deal after he was fired, he was told that Bloomberg’s stance was that journalists were not entitled to a share of advertising revenue generated by an adaptation and that none would be included in his agreement. Nocera’s lawsuit alleges that this flies in the face of the ‘all revenue’ language in the contract. He’s also asking for an accounting of all the money that Bloomberg has earned from ‘The Shrink Next Door.'”

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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.