Bloomberg News founding editor in chief Matthew Winkler spoke with Dean Rotbart of Business News Luminaries about the 30th anniversary of the news service.
Bloomberg Business News posted its first story on June 14, 1990. Winkler was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal who had written about company founder Michael Bloomberg and was hired to start the news service.
“It was symbiotic. As it turned out, the people that I wrote about and reported on for The Wall Street Journal in the securities industry were people he knew,” said Winkler. “The turned out to be his best friends. So he’s talking to his Wall Street circle of friends, and my name came up.”
“It took at least a couple of years for us to figure out working together that some of my best sources at The Wall Street Journal he considered his best friends,” added Winkler.
Winkler said he saw in Bloomberg, in contrast to the people who ran Wall Street, someone who was about the science of math and money.
“To me, that was far more compelling as we got closer to the end of the 20th century,” said Winkler. “He was using computers to get at the truth.”
Winkler said he looked for integrity, commitment and gratitude in hiring journalists to build Bloomberg News.
To listen, go here.
