The Modern Journalist

Bloomberg: A Model Modern Newsroom

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I’ve been enamored with the Bloomberg journalism model for several years. As far back as my days at Berkeley in 1998-2000, the reporters I knew who worked there told me stories of working across multiple mediums. For them, it wasn’t a choice — it was the job.

One friend, who occasionally joined a streaming radio show I did during my time at Wired News, said their were workstations with a computer, video camera and microphone so they could file a story, go live on the television and conduct radio interviews.

Yikes. That’s cool.

I can’t imagine trying to implement such a system in most news room without serious push back from the journalists. Maybe that’s too harsh, though. I’ve got a skewed view of journalists after 15 years in the industry.

But I’m not the only one who believes Bloomberg has it write. Paul Goldberger, a writer for The New Yorker, gave an interview the other day where he discussed a piece he wrote last year about two different news room: The New York Times and Bloomberg.

First, the Times.

There’s a great contrast between the two newsrooms, not so much in what they look like but how they were perceived by the reporters. My experience with the New York Times reporters I’ve known — one a friend, one a professor and one a professional contact — has been the same: an arrogance of time and importance. Each has, at one time or another, told me that until they weigh in on a subject, it’s not news.

Ack.

With that experience as a backdrop, I found this passage in Goldberger’s piece — which chronicled the reaction of reporters (not good), editors and the editorial board to the open spaces and clear glass walls — telling:

One member of the editorial board, who gave up a large, enclosed office in the old building for one of these small fishbowls, growled to me, “There’s no place I can change into a tuxedo.” Undermining the egalitarian topography, Bill Keller, the executive editor, has rigged up a screen of frosted glass inside his office so that he can’t be seen from the newsroom when he sits at his desk.

By contrast, the Bloomberg offices are individualist and open. There are no private spaces (apparently, you can change into a tuxedo in the bathroom) and not even the CEO frosts his window:

No one, not even the chairman and the chief executive, has a private office. Instead, some four thousand employees sit in uniform rows at identical, white-topped desks bearing custom-built Bloomberg flat-panel computer terminals.

Although the desk of the C.E.O., Lex Fenwick, is larger and is set slightly apart — “I am not wholly pure,” he told me — he sits just a few feet from the young employees who handle customer inquiries and complaints. “I wanted to make the point that we are a customer-service business above all,” he said.

I have no opinion as to whether Bloomberg is a more modern news organization than the Times. I have my suspicions, but those are based upon my interactions with their reporters throughout the years. I haven’t been to the offices ever.

What I do know is this: the description of Bloomberg is far more democratic and modern (re: Web like) while the Times is hierarchical and closed (re: print like).

Just reading this article and weighing it against my experiences from the past makes me understand some of the business decisions that have been made regarding digital properties at the Times.

Bloomberg, though, gets it right.