Why Bloomberg launched an Asian website

John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, was interviewed by Ira Dugal of LiveMint in India about the financial news operation.

Here is an excerpt:

You launched the Asia-focused Bloomberg Business website this week. Why now?

Why now? Because we are ready. When I came in, we had an American website, but we didn’t have a European one or an Asian one. And I think you need to have some degree of regional additionalizing of content for different regions. Actually I think it’s more than that. It’s good for the journalists as well because you see much more of your content going out and there is a huge audience out here, and there is so much to cover. When I look at the world, and I tend to look at these things over a 10-15-year horizon, then over that period, it is very difficult to believe that the Asian focus will not grow, both in terms of the coverage and the breadth of what we offer. You would also expect the terminals (Bloomberg terminals) and the Web audience to grow in Asia.

Is it possible to see Asia as one market, editorially? Or do you have to further localize?

When I arrived, we only had an American website. We had plans of having a London website, we changed that to a European website. We now have an Asian website. Going forward, I would like to look at things like having a Middle East and Africa website, a Latin American website and maybe looking at a Chinese website. But if I was an Indian businessperson, I would want to know enormously what is happening in China. So you mustn’t become too local. There are very good local publications. We have to think about where we can add the most value and that may be in the ability to set things in a global or regional context, and that I think is a big deal.

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