The man who runs Bloomberg’s speed desk

Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider writes about Kevin Reynolds, who oversees Bloomberg’s speed desk operation.

Weisenthal writes, “One of his monitors is a feed that’s capturing all the major newswires in real time.

“He communicates with his team using a headset, and on his desk he keeps a digital clock that lets him and his team prepare for rushes — corporate news tends to break at the top and the bottom of the hour, and at this moment, everyone goes into battle stations, ready to grab anything that hits the wires, or goes up on the SEC.

“Reynolds walks into work every day with one mission: ‘make money for his clients.’

“He does this by allowing Bloomberg subscribers (AKA: traders and bankers at every corner of the financial world) know about news before anyone else does.

“‘We measure wins and losses down to the hundredth of a second,’ says Reynolds. ‘We have to deliver.’

“In the wake of some notable reporting SNAFUS by major news orgs, I was eager to know how Bloomberg avoided getting things wrong, given the premium on speed. After all, whereas there were no real negative repercussions of CNN’s SCOTUS screwup, Bloomberg terminal users literally control with their keyboards, trillions of dollars worth of wealth.”

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.