Bloomberg has distributed a policy to newsroom staff on blogging, Twittering and Facebook updating. And in keeping with the company's tyrannical management culture, the rules are far more authoritarian than similar admonitions recently dispensed at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and elsewhere.
Just about every media company, from us (small) to Time Inc. (big) to many others of varying sizes, shapes, and predilections have been laying people off lately. Because everything is terrible, especially the prospects of media employment! Still, we don't want to be perceived as negative. So we've assembled a roundup of the major media companies that haven't had any big layoffs throughout this new depression, and analyzed why they've been so fortunate. Praise them:
There's nothing easier than hating on dumb young telemarketers and their annoying sales pitches. Though it is possible to summon some sympathy for the unfortunate Bloomberg sales caller who mistakenly thought that Vanity Fair contributing editor Seth Mnookin was a Vanity Fair PR person. Outrageous! Doesn't this anonymous business services salesman read Seth Mnookin's stories? Seth just had a big story in Vanity Fair about Bloomberg, so he was surprised enough to transcribe the entire message he got:
Everybody in the media fucks up once in a while. Sometimes the fallout is bad. Remember when Bloomberg accidentally ran Steve Jobs' obituary while he was still alive? Then shortly afterward they mistakenly ran an old headline about United's bankruptcy as if it was current, and temporarily destroyed the company's stock price? Both are very bad errors, but at least Bloomberg apologized for them. Which is more than you can say for Dow Jones, which handily fails to mention its own mistake that crushed GE's stock price yesterday: With 15 minutes left in the trading day yesterday, Dow Jones ran a mistaken report that (almost singlehandedly) erased the day's gains in the DJ Industrial Average:
YouTube announced a new channel called "Your Money" yesterday, describing it as place to "learn more about borrowing, investing, and saving, along with Financial News and Analysis." YouTube said the channel would feature content from Bloomberg, Reuters, Wall Street Journal. But now YouTube Your Money is gone. So is the blog post announcing its arrival. A Twitter message from YouTube PR, a Google search result and a logo screen-captured by Epicenter remain and are copied below. I have two theories on why this happened.Since Wired links to Bloomberg News as the source of its information, one possibility is that Bloomberg published a story about the new channel before they were supposed to. That kind of thing seems to happen a lot at Bloomberg these days. Seeing the article, YouTube PR panicked and pushed out a blog post that triggered a Twitter message. Then Bloomberg pulled its story and YouTube PR followed suit. Update: In an updated post, Wired now calls the link to Bloomberg their own "big goof." Another possibility: Bank of America, named as a channel partner, pulled its support from the project because it either doesn't have cash to throw at experimental sponsorships or would prefer to keep a low brand profile while weathering the current financial crises.
"Bloomberg TV is largely an afterthought in a lucrative genre dominated by CNBC," wrote one journalist a year ago. But Bloomberg is trying to build up its business TV coverage, in part by letting Google handle the ad inventory. PaidContent summed up the deal announced this morning: "Google TV Ads primarily works with EchoStar and a much smaller, local California cable company, to serve the ads. That only gives Google access to the satellite TV company's 14 million households out of a roughly 65 million basic cable subscribers. Given the hunger for economic news due to the volatile financial markets, the Bloomberg deal could hardly have come at a better time." Here's the full press release, with "BLOOMBERG TELEVISION" left in screaming caps:
If Silicon Valley is mentally disconnected from this week's Wall Street mess, it's because ad-supported companies dominate the Valley these days. High-net-worth investors aren't reeled in with cheap banners, so the demise of Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch hardly pinches budgets. Lehman spent just $501,900 on ads, both online and off, in the first half of 2008. Merrill Lynch, which has a much larger consumer business, still only spent $38 million on advertising last year. Still, some 150,000 people will lose their jobs in this week's fallout. That's a lot of tech infrastructure no one will want to pay for anymore. Lehman, for example, spent $309 million on IT last quarter alone. What's more, Lehman's investment banking connections run deep in the Valley's world of startups, VCs and big company buyers. Below, five tech companies that find themselves wishing they could unleash themselves from Wall Street's fate.
Here's a pretty edifice that neatly illustrates this market crisis: it's Canary Wharf Finance II, a skyscraper in London. It's the landlord of Lehman Brothers! Whose rent payments are insured by AIG, which is about to join Lehman in bankruptcy court. It is not a good time to be in the commercial real estate market right now. Just ask Lehman Brothers, whose $30 billion portfolio of commercial real estate backed securities is widely blamed for sowing the seeds of its demise. Politicians like to exploit the links between the market crisis and little exurban tract homes in foreclosure but this thing seems a lot more emblematic: its owner's stock has plunged by half this year as City of London commercial rents have fallen 27% and landlords prepare to compete with another four million square feet that broke ground when everyone in finance thought the money would never go dry.Also it is shaped like a penis. [Bloomberg]
Gadzooks: at Bloomberg LP, the financial news company owned by NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg, six dozen women—"about one in seven of the roughly 500 female employees who became pregnant in the last six years"—are now suing the company for being treated unfairly. That's up from an initial plaintiff count of three. It's almost as if there's some sort of unfolding pattern here:
We're hearing from inside Bloomberg News that the newswire is chopping up the Bloomberg Way, the cultish journalism guide assembled by tyrannical editor Matthew Winkler. Winkler believed in the manifesto so deeply he used it to raise his teenaged sons, and its rigid prescriptions became gospel. But what was once a rulebook has now reportedly been demoted to a set of guidelines. Said to be out is the proscription against the word "but" along with the 850-word cap on stories. Pressure to produce "Greet The Week" features (whatever those are) has abated. The changes, long anticipated, should come as no shock, but Matthews' closest underlings may be getting nervous over the continuing accumulation of power by Winkler's internal rival Norman Pearlstine. Said a tipster:
Yesterday the stock market destruction of United Airlines looked like just another case of bumbling by the Bloomberg news wire. That still appears to be very much correct, but new details tell a larger and more sinister story — a conspiracy of robots to nuke United Airlines by duping one or two humans into acting as pawns. The robot cabal involves aggressive, autonomous bots at Google, Tribune Company and on Wall Street which, despite extensive safeguards, turned swiftly against the wishes of their creators. The whole thing was triggered by some seemingly innocent Google searches and only God knows who it will kill next!
We heard fourth-hand that Matthew Winkler, the bow-tied tyrant who leads Bloomberg News' editorial side, announced internally this morning that he is "stepping away from day-to-day management of the news operations." Another source said he's not stepping away—"it's more like he's spreading the wealth around a little bit." This would probably be a planned evolution of management rather than a result of the newswire's recent monumental fuckups, but employees would be happy for less of Winkler either way. Any Bloomberg people who can provide some info on this, please email us ASAP. UPDATE: Talking Biz News has the fuzzy, but possibly horrifying details of Winkler's move:
As errors continue to mount at Bloomberg News, the question isn't just whose heads will roll, but from how high up on the org chart. The financial newswire avoided cratering Apple Inc stock with its premature Steve Jobs obituary last month because markets had been closed for half an hour by the time the false item was published. Bloomberg's incorrect report stating Sarah Palin had been arrested for drunk driving 22 years ago garnered little notice before it was corrected. But now Bloomberg has done some real damage. It incorrectly flashed a headline to terminals Monday stating United Airlines had filed for a second bankruptcy, sending shares to $3 from $12 and wiping out close to $1 billion in stock market valuation. After a halt in trading, the stock recovered to $11 by the end of the day. But the damage to both investors and to Bloomberg's reputation has been done. It hardly helps that the incorrect news bubbled up through a bizarre series of events:
