In a time when the media landscape more than resembles a graveyard, everyone at Bloomberg is upbeat and optimistic. Oh, and ambitious. “We want to be the world’s most influential news organization,” says Andrew Lack, the chief of Bloomberg television, radio and “dot-com endeavors.”
It’s also an expert example of how good big media companies are at being covered by other big media companies, even down to breaking down the fourth wall of journalism and admitting the public relations manipulations happening right before the readers’ eyes: “Oh, my! I don’t want to sound as if I’m on message,” one employee says, “laughing apprehensively while also sending a ‘help me’ look to a Bloomberg spokeswoman nearby.” It&
Then the Times gets in on the meta-something game, referencing itself as a counterpoint about the state of big media:
Publishing giants like Condé Nast, Time Inc. and The New York Times, with their veteran scribes and rich histories, have laid off people and scaled back. Bloomberg may lack the pedigree and gloss of some of its rivals, but it has one thing they don’t right now: money to throw around.
The cash-heavy company is playing news like the Yankees play baseball, buying up stars that have gotten too expensive for their struggling brands, recruiting “refugees” from the Wall Street Journal and Fortune. Plus there are new bureaus “in places like Ecuador and Abu Dhabi.” Wordly!
Its editorial staff (which includes radio, TV and Web site workers) now numbers 2,200, compared with 1,250 journalists at The Times and 1,900 at Dow Jones (a figure that includes the newswires and the Journal staff).
The four-page feature takes the reader through the BusinessWeek purchase (“Bloomberg opened its wallet and snatched it away from circling private equity firms in October for just $5 million in cash”) and their new readership vision (“Main Street readers and, much more important for Bloomberg, senior executives, government leaders and other global movers and shakers”).
But then comes the excess and uncontrollable flashbacks to the days of excess that got publishers like Condé Nast into the position they’
Employees snack on free kiwis and pomegranates and gulp fancy sodas. The company even employs full-time bathroom attendants to wipe up errant droplets of water on the countertops.
It almost sounds like an alternative universe until the reveal: “Although Bloomberg, which is privately held, draws attention for its media ambitions, a vast majority of the company’s projected $6.3 billion in revenue — and nearly all of its profit — derives from financial information systems.”
A-ha! With news as a secondary business, things flourish. Otherwise? Not so much. And that doesn’t mean it will be fun!
[T]he place can still come across as something of a white-collar, digital sweatshop — terminals and ID cards, for example, closely monitor employees’ comings and goings.
But don’t get it twisted: “This is not an old-media company,” Mr. Lack says. “We’re a new kid on the block in a new world order.”
The entire feature is well worth a read, if only for how mind-bendingly different it is than any other media stories of recent months. It might hurt your head.
(photo via Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)