From Capital New York:
The new Bloomberg Media
Last weekend, Bloomberg L.P. held its annual company picnic, a seven-figure soirée on Randall's Island with the types of attractions you'd expect from the company's billionaire benefactor: food tents cooking up everything from hamburgers to gourmet pizza to buffalo sausages and roast pig; rides including a ferris wheel, bumper cars, a zipline and a nausea-inducing contraption called The Orbiter; and a humongous video screen beaming in the latest World Cup matches live from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Justin Smith was unable to attend. Otherwise, the event might have been something of a rite of passage during his first year as a key lieutenant in Michael Bloomberg's financial news and information empire.
Late last July, Smith was named chief executive of Bloomberg L.P.'s media group, hired away from Atlantic Media, where he was credited with leading that company's transformation from antique print object to 21st-century digital success story. Nearly 12 months and about as many ears-full of strategy jargon later, Bloomberg employees are eager to see some of Smith's behind-the-scenes initiatives come to life.Meanwhile, a trip to the Wayback Machine turns up:
They'll have to wait a few months longer: Capital has learned that media group employees were informed last week that the first in a planned suite of "digital-led multi-platform brands," a politics site being developed by high-profile political journalists and "Game Change" authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, both poached by Bloomberg in May with annual salaries reported to be north of $1 million, will debut on October 6—30 days before the 2014 Midterms—in tandem with a daily half-hour television show hosted by the duo that will air in Bloomberg TV's 5 p.m. timeslot as well as streaming online.
In a town hall meeting that lasted about two hours, Bloomberg Businessweek editor-in-chief Josh Tyrangiel, who's been working closely with Smith on the media-group strategy, described the show as "much closer to 'Pardon the Interruption' on ESPN than 'Meet the Press,'" according to a partial transcript provided by a source. "One of our biggest advantages in politics is we are not ideological, we are not a sewer." (Presumably the show will share the name of the site: Bloomberg Politics.)
The next launch in the sequence is expected to be Bloomberg Business, which will align with the content of Businessweek and businessweek.com. There had been talk of launching the business site ahead of Bloomberg Politics in September, but the internal target is now looking more like December, according to sources with knowledge of the roll-out....MORE
Politico May 5 "Can Bloomberg buy 2016?":
Bloomberg Media has never had a claim on politics. But what Bloomberg wants, it buys -- and Bloomberg wants in on 2016.
On Sunday, the company announced that it had hired "Game Change" co-authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann to head a new, stand-alone brand dedicated to politics. The price tag: $1 million-plus for each man, per year, through 2016, plus additional resources for new staff members (total number to-be-determined). That's a fortune for most media organizations, a drop in the bucket for Bloomberg.
By buying Halperin and Heilemann -- the best-known names in presidential campaign journalism -- Bloomberg is hoping to stake a claim on what is shaping up to be one of the most exciting election cycles in recent memory. The two magazine journalists -- formerly of Time and New York, respectively -- are extremely well-sourced, pick up major scoops and write deeply reported pieces from the trail. They will also host a daily television show on Bloomberg TV and serve as major draws for sponsored events, which is a signature part of Bloomberg Media CEO Justin B. Smith's business plan....MORE
