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Does anyone know how Bloomberg magazine is funded? It seems to produce very high-quality articles that are provided for free (unlike WSJ which has a very aggres

by trendia 10y ago

Does anyone know how Bloomberg magazine is funded? It seems to produce very high-quality articles that are provided for free (unlike WSJ which has a very aggressive paywall).

d4l3k 10y ago
It's funded by the financial firm Bloomberg L.P. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P.
dave_sullivan 10y ago
I'm not sure it's necessarily related to why it doesn't have a paywall (I don't think bloomberg news is opposed to money), but Bloomberg the company started selling computer terminals on wall street in the 80s and made a fortune. Basically, "Hey stock broker, how'd you like to look up stock quotes instantly on a computer instead of..." I'm actually not sure what they were doing before, paper trading slips I guess? "Sort it out at the end of the day"? "Selling networked computers to banks" wasn't actually as obvious then as you'd think. Wall Street was a relatively boring place and went crazy in the 80s, kind of coinciding with the rise of Bloomberg terminals. These days, a bloomberg terminal costs $24,000 a year, for a computer and a subscription to Bloomberg's information service, which ostensibly gets high quality and timely market information. It's a good business. Bloomberg is a really interesting startup story overall.
- yellowstuff 10y ago
  From about 1870 to the 1960s stock quotes were communicated using stock tickers that communicated over telegraph lines and printed thin strips of paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker_tape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker_tape The system worked well until the 1960s when the volume of trading on busy days overwhelmed the system, sometimes delaying the quotes for hours. There had been plans to build a computer network already, but the data outages made it an urgent issue. The classic book Business Adventures has a chapter on the chaos sowed by the failure of ticker tape. https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-Street/dp/1497644895/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-St...
  - neffy 10y ago
    Historical trivia - it also overwhelmed the system in 1929 - adding to the panic then were long delays in stock prices being updated regionally.
tanderson92 10y ago
Not just high-quality articles; it employs excellent columnists as well. Matt Levine is a favorite of many HNers.
- paganel 10y ago
  They hired the former editor of The Economist John Micklethwait as their editor-in-chief a couple of years ago. That was felt both by Bloomberg News, whose articles have become more interesting for the general populace, and by The Economist, whose quality and impartiality I felt has gone down since then.
ryankennedyio 10y ago
Bloomberg LP makes roughly 8 billion in revenue from selling their terminal to 300,000 subscribers (25,000 per annum). I feel like the Bloomberg magazine is just a way to reinforce their status as the top disseminator of financial news, so that financial firms don't really think of the other options when looking for new data/terminal subscriptions, because Bloomberg is always "there". Strange model. It's kind of like, a pretty high quality product you get for free, paid for by the people who purchase the really-really-expensive product.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mseebach 10y ago
  Is it really strange? Isn't somewhere on the loss-leader/freemium spectrum, just on a grander scale than what we're used to from con/prosumer webapps?
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    The model is far more established than you might think. The first general-circulation newspapers in the US were largely party political organs, some of which retain elements of that in their names: the Arizona Republic was originally the Arizona Republican. Papers with Union in their titles occasionally reflect a labour bent. That faded with the advent of mass-market advertising, which grew tremendously from about 1860 onward, and becoming a mounting concern in the 1890s and 1900s. I've mentioned Hamilton Holt's short book (notes of a lecture, really), Commercialism and Journalism (1909) a few times. The first section is a very good breakdown of the role of advertising in media. https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft
- pdpi 10y ago
  Not that strange. Think of the magazine as being paid for by the marketing budget.
- mabbo 10y ago
  > 300,000 subscribers (25,000 per annum) Crazy, unverified statistic I heard- around 20% of those users only use that subscription for access to their AOL instant messenger clone. All trades are on it, so you've got to be on it too. Walled garden to the extreme.

by trendia 10y ago

Does anyone know how Bloomberg magazine is funded? It seems to produce very high-quality articles that are provided for free (unlike WSJ which has a very aggressive paywall).

d4l3k 10y ago

It's funded by the financial firm Bloomberg L.P. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P.

dave_sullivan 10y ago

I'm not sure it's necessarily related to why it doesn't have a paywall (I don't think bloomberg news is opposed to money), but Bloomberg the company started selling computer terminals on wall street in the 80s and made a fortune. Basically, "Hey stock broker, how'd you like to look up stock quotes instantly on a computer instead of..." I'm actually not sure what they were doing before, paper trading slips I guess? "Sort it out at the end of the day"? "Selling networked computers to banks" wasn't actually as obvious then as you'd think. Wall Street was a relatively boring place and went crazy in the 80s, kind of coinciding with the rise of Bloomberg terminals. These days, a bloomberg terminal costs $24,000 a year, for a computer and a subscription to Bloomberg's information service, which ostensibly gets high quality and timely market information. It's a good business. Bloomberg is a really interesting startup story overall.

yellowstuff 10y ago
From about 1870 to the 1960s stock quotes were communicated using stock tickers that communicated over telegraph lines and printed thin strips of paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker_tape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker_tape The system worked well until the 1960s when the volume of trading on busy days overwhelmed the system, sometimes delaying the quotes for hours. There had been plans to build a computer network already, but the data outages made it an urgent issue. The classic book Business Adventures has a chapter on the chaos sowed by the failure of ticker tape. https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-Street/dp/1497644895/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-St...
- neffy 10y ago
  Historical trivia - it also overwhelmed the system in 1929 - adding to the panic then were long delays in stock prices being updated regionally.

tanderson92 10y ago

Not just high-quality articles; it employs excellent columnists as well. Matt Levine is a favorite of many HNers.

paganel 10y ago
They hired the former editor of The Economist John Micklethwait as their editor-in-chief a couple of years ago. That was felt both by Bloomberg News, whose articles have become more interesting for the general populace, and by The Economist, whose quality and impartiality I felt has gone down since then.

ryankennedyio 10y ago

Bloomberg LP makes roughly 8 billion in revenue from selling their terminal to 300,000 subscribers (25,000 per annum). I feel like the Bloomberg magazine is just a way to reinforce their status as the top disseminator of financial news, so that financial firms don't really think of the other options when looking for new data/terminal subscriptions, because Bloomberg is always "there". Strange model. It's kind of like, a pretty high quality product you get for free, paid for by the people who purchase the really-really-expensive product.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mseebach 10y ago
Is it really strange? Isn't somewhere on the loss-leader/freemium spectrum, just on a grander scale than what we're used to from con/prosumer webapps?
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  The model is far more established than you might think. The first general-circulation newspapers in the US were largely party political organs, some of which retain elements of that in their names: the Arizona Republic was originally the Arizona Republican. Papers with Union in their titles occasionally reflect a labour bent. That faded with the advent of mass-market advertising, which grew tremendously from about 1860 onward, and becoming a mounting concern in the 1890s and 1900s. I've mentioned Hamilton Holt's short book (notes of a lecture, really), Commercialism and Journalism (1909) a few times. The first section is a very good breakdown of the role of advertising in media. https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft
pdpi 10y ago
Not that strange. Think of the magazine as being paid for by the marketing budget.
mabbo 10y ago
> 300,000 subscribers (25,000 per annum) Crazy, unverified statistic I heard- around 20% of those users only use that subscription for access to their AOL instant messenger clone. All trades are on it, so you've got to be on it too. Walled garden to the extreme.