Journalism 'needs clear voice'

Bloomberg can lay claim to capturing the attention of one of the most committed audiences in the world. According to Richard Jaroslovsky, Bloomberg's executive editor, his audience uses the terminal for an astonishing average of nine hours a day. In contrast, a dedicated Wall Street Journal reader spends not more than 20 minutes with the broadsheet each day.

The key to the Bloomberg's success, Jaroslovsky believes, lies in the power of the media to create communities. "Bloomberg is really in the business of harnessing that power to create a community," he told delegates at the Arabian Business Media and Marketing Conference adding, "the community that Bloomberg has created is a unique one."

Speaking with open admiration of the media's potential to reach disparate global audiences in a rapidly developing technological age, Jaroslovsky drew on the importance of the international communities that media outlets can coalesce, and how these audiences can be reached with a consistent clear, transparent and trustworthy voice.

Transcending geographical boundaries, the media today has the ability to unite people from different continents and cultures on the basis of shared interests. For the Bloomberg audience the core of those shared interests comprises business, economics, finance and politics. And at the heart of the organisation's approach to covering these issues lay two major elements. At an intellectual level there is Bloomberg's famed and respected philosophy of journalism, known internally as ‘the Bloomberg Way'. At a technical level is what Jaroslovky rather enigmatically refers to as ‘the terminal.'

"The terminal in the 21st century is not a physical object, it is software," he explained. "It is software and services that are used by financial professionals around the globe to provide news data and analytics that help them make decisions on allocation of capital and where money should flow." These financial professionals are the backbone of Bloomberg's remarkable audience. Among them are the managers of phenomenal amounts of the world's wealth. Jaroslovsky estimates that fund managers across the world control, on average, around US$1.5bn.

But how do you earn the trust and loyalty of such a demanding audience?

"The fundamental challenge for any journalist when you are in this environment, when you are crossing national boundaries, when you are crossing cultural boundaries, is to establish standards that translate, that cross those boundaries and establish your core values for your customers," Jaroslovsky said.

Bloomberg seeks to fulfill the five ‘Fs': to be the first word and the fastest in providing more information; to be factual; to have the final word, "we want to be definitive in what we report," said Jaroslovsky; and to offer comment on future events.

Jaroslovsky concluded with an emphatic plea for journalistic integrity and transparency around the globe. "In this media world that is changing so rapidly it is absolutely essential that we establish principles by which we live and by which we can clearly communicate."

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