Bloomberg sale spells profitable future of journalism by numbers
Owen Thomas · 07/16/08 04:00PMMerrill Lynch, under financial pressure, is selling one of its more valuable assets, a 20 percent stake in Bloomberg, the financial-information business, for $4.5 billion to $5 billion. The sale marks the business's value at $22 billion to $25 billion — four times or more what Rupert Murdoch paid to tuck the Wall Street Journal's publisher, Dow Jones, a far more prestigious name in business news, into News Corp. Under Murdoch's ownership, Journal staffers are groaning about new expectations for productivity. Several highly paid, but not highly prolific, writers have been laid off, including George Anders, one of the biggest names in technology reporting. Join the club, Bloomberg writers would say; they are constantly measured, and perpetually disgruntled. What Bloomberg's high valuation tells us: Expectations of productivity in the news business are here to stay. Prestige and quality are well enough — but only if they make a noticeable difference. Being read matters just as much as being right.