Bloomberg News

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Screenshot of the home page of Bloomberg.com, which features stories from Bloomberg News.

Bloomberg.com

Bloomberg News, news service based in New York City, New York, known for providing business and economic news to investors and for increasing competition between business newswires. Bloomberg News is operated by Bloomberg LP, a private financial-data services and media company.

In 1981 American businessman and politician Michael Bloomberg founded the company that became Bloomberg LP (originally named Innovative Market Systems). Initially, the company sold computer terminals to Wall Street investment banks that included financial data about stocks, bonds, and other investments. In 1990 Bloomberg and American journalist Matthew Winkler launched Bloomberg Business News, with Winkler serving as editor in chief. The news service was provided on the company’s computer terminals.

By 1991, Bloomberg Business News had opened bureaus in New York, Washington, London, Tokyo, Toronto, and New Jersey. In 1994 it added Bloomberg Television, a business news channel. That same year, the company started an investing magazine called Bloomberg Personal that was distributed as a Sunday newspaper supplement, and in 1996 it opened Bloomberg Press, which published books for financial professionals and the general public on investing, economics, and current affairs. In 2009 the company acquired BusinessWeek magazine (renamed Bloomberg BusinessWeek).

As Bloomberg News grew in the business news world, its competitors became wary of its success. Dow Jones ended up selling its Telerate data operations (similar to the Bloomberg terminal in that they were leased to Wall Street traders and contained data about investments) because it was unable to compete with both Bloomberg and Reuters, and in 1998, Reuters employees were accused of stealing confidential data from Bloomberg in an attempt to copy some of its services.

Winkler remained editor in chief of Bloomberg News until 2014, when he was replaced by English journalist John Micklethwait, former editor in chief of The Economist. By 2016, Bloomberg News had 150 bureaus in 73 countries worldwide.

Bloomberg News was known for having an intense, editor-driven culture, and employees who left the news service for other media organizations typically were not hired back. Business journalists who joined Bloomberg were trained to write stories in a specific manner based on the internal stylebook, The Bloomberg Way: A Guide for Reporters and Editors (1991). The book, which has been updated multiple times, explained to reporters how to cover specific stories, such as company earnings and the daily stock market performance. Basic Bloomberg News stories were known for their four-paragraph lead structure, which included the “nut” paragraph (the paragraph that explained the rationale for the story; usually but not necessarily the third paragraph) and a quote, often in the fourth paragraph.

The Bloomberg terminal was a useful reporting tool for many business journalists. The terminal provided access to information about millions of company executives, Wall Street analysts and investors, and industry consultants, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses. It also provided Securities and Exchange Commission documents for all public companies and information on lawsuits and legal rulings.

Bloomberg News also was a major force behind changes in journalism. Winkler pushed federal government agencies to recognize it as a media organization in the 1990s, allowing its reporters to be credentialed to cover breaking news such as monthly unemployment statistics and quarterly gross domestic product numbers. Bloomberg reporters had been denied credentials because their news was distributed through terminals, not via a wire service or in a publication.

In addition, Winkler was behind a push for Regulation Fair Disclosure, a law enacted by the Securities and Exchange Commission that requires public companies to disseminate important information to everyone at the same time. Previously, companies could choose to block investors, analysts, and journalists from listening to its conference calls discussing its earnings or other news and from attending meetings where it discussed its operations. The new regulation gave business journalists access to more information about the companies they covered.