Bloomberg's been bragging it suddenly tripled its number of scoops in the first quarter. How did the financial wire do it? A company mole forwarded along one particularly egregious example.

Among the "exclusives" the company has been bragging about internally came June 1, when London critic Richard Vines scooped the Associated Press and Reuters by a full minute on the result of the televised Britain's Got Talent competition: Internet sensation Susan Boyle lost to dance troupe Diversity. You can find the bragging and the "story" reprinted below.

It turns out, our tipster reports, that only about 500 people read this story, and no wonder: Anyone in need of the freshest Got Talent information needed only turn on their TV; there would have been no point in waiting for Bloomberg to route the results through its terminals. Our tipster:

One way of expressing this is that 12m people knew this apparently crucial result immediately by dint of live free-to-air TV, while 500 poor souls who pay $2000 a month for the system were totally in the dark for at least five minutes.

That's eminently logical, to be sure, but at Bloomberg it's the exception that proves the rule: The company remains as obsessed with metrics as its founder Michael Bloomberg, and, within the firm's command-and-control culture, numbers tend to trump reason.

BN FIRST: Susan Boyle Loses in Final of U.K. Talent Show
2009-06-01 18:56:25.35 GMT

((Richard Vines was the first to report on the result
of a U.K. talent show contest. AP and Reuters followed a
minute later. Editors: Sylvia Wier, Christopher Wellisz.
Team leader: Mark Beech.))
By Richard Vines
May 31 (Bloomberg) — Susan Boyle, the church worker
from Scotland whose voice and life story captured the
attention of people around the world, was defeated in the
final of the U.K. television talent show that made her
famous.
To read the Bloomberg story, go to {NSN KKIKQ907SXKX }


-0- Jun/01/2009 18:56 GMT