Categories: OLD Media Moves

Working the M&A beat at Bloomberg

Alex Sherman is a reporter at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. He started at Bloomberg in 2008 as an intern out of graduate school and has since worked in a variety of roles and covered a number of beats. Now, he covers mergers and acquisitions in the technology, media and telecom sectors.

He spoke with Bloomberg public relations professional Lauren Meller about his job.

Here is an excerpt:

You’re also working on getting your MBA at New York University. How relevant are your studies to the reporting you do now for Bloomberg?
It’s such a nice thing; it really adds to my reporting. As I covered pay-TV, I was taking these media and entertainment classes that were being taught by people who were running the companies I was covering. And as I’ve switched over to the M&A beat, there are also plenty of classes on mergers and acquisitions and valuation of companies. So it’s been very useful.
How does the media and telecom deals beat compare to other related subjects, like reporting on general trends or developments in technology?
It’s very intense. It’s extremely competitive. I would say it’s probably the most competitive beat at Bloomberg. We’re trying to break stories before the competition – and before the company issues a press release. The idea is we want to move markets. We want people to get their money’s worth from the Bloomberg Terminal by having us break these stories. It’s all hands on deck.
There’s a lot of collaboration between the company news teams and the deals teams. So if I’m covering tech, media and telecom deals, I’m working very closely with all the company news reporters in tech and all the company news reporters in media and telecom. It’s me trying to get a good sense of what all these companies do and what they’re looking for because, obviously, in the entire world of media and telecom, there are a lot of companies. So I rely on the company reporters to help me.