The Bloomberg Way Since 1996, Bloomberg Press has published books for financial professionals, as well as books of general interest in investing, eco- nomics, current affairs, and policy affecting investors and business people. Titles are written by well-known practitioners, Bloomberg reporters and columnists, and other leading authorities and jour- nalists. Bloomberg Press books have been translated into more than 20 languages. For a list of available titles, please visit our website at www.wiley .com/go/bloombergpress. The Bloomberg Way A Guide fo r Journalists John Micklethwait Paul Addison Jennifer Sondag Bill Grueskin Cover image and design: Bloomberg Studio Copyright © 2017 by Bloomberg LP. All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. The Bloomberg Way was previously published in eleven editions by Bloomberg for its employees. Subsequent editions, including the fourteenth edition, were published by Wiley. Published simultaneously in Canada. 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Title: The Bloomberg way : a guide for journalists / John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief ; with Paul Addison, Jennifer Sondag and Bill Grueskin. Description: Fourteenth edition. | Hoboken, New Jersey : Bloomberg Press, [2017] | Series: Bloomberg ; 2884 | Includes index. | Identifi ers: LCCN 2017013991 (print) | LCCN 2017033178 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119272328 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119272311 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119272328 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781119272335 (ePub) Subjects: LCSH: Bloomberg News (Firm) | Journalism, Commercial—Authorship—Style manuals. | BISAC: REFERENCE / Writing Skills. Classifi cation: LCC PN4784.C7 (ebook) | LCC PN4784.C7 W56 2017 (print) | DDC 070.4/4965—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013991 Printed in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ffi rs iv 11 November 2017 4:11 PM Contents Introduction ix Chapter 1: What We Do 1 The Bloomberg Way 2 Bloomberg Editorial & Research 4 Collaboration in Action 9 Chapter 2 How We Report 15 Learning a Beat 15 Sourcing 21 Interviewing 26 Breaking News 30 The Multiplatform Approach 33 Beyond Breaking News 37 Pitching Your Story 42 Research Using the Terminal 44 Chapter 3 How We Write 49 Headlines 50 v vi Contents Leads & Nut Paragraphs 60 The Whole Story 69 Writing Well 74 Corrections & Lapses 80 Sending Corrections 83 Social Media 83 Chapter 4 How We Use Data 91 Charting 92 Commonly Used Terms 95 Common Errors 100 Automation 101 Technical Analysis 103 Chapter 5 Ethics & Standards 107 Accuracy & Fairness 108 Defamation 110 Privacy 113 Access 114 Plagiarism 115 Conflicts of Interest 116 Conduct 120 Endorsements & Paying Our Way 122 Events & Interviews 123 Contests 124 Chapter 6 How We Cover Markets 127 What’s Moving (& Why) 128 Traders & Investors 131 Markets Style 133 Equities 135 Debt 138 Currencies 143 Commodities 147 Chapter 7 How We Cover Companies 153 Earnings 154 Deals 160 Corporate Debt 166 Finding News 170 Contents vii Context & Valuation 173 Corporate Equity 177 Chapter 8 How We Cover Economies & Governments 183 Economies 184 Governments 192 Acknowledgments 197 Appendix 199 Words & Terms 213 Index 323 Introduction EVERY ARMY OF journalists needs its marching orders and rules of engagement. Ever since its founding in 1990, Bloomberg News has followed The Bloomberg Way. Written by Matt Winkler, our founder and editor-in-chief until 2015, it has been one of the most successful journalistic bibles of modern time. The Bloomberg Way has played a huge role in turning a tiny upstart, which began with just a dozen reporters crammed into two offices in New York and London, into the leading provider of financial and business news around the globe. Its first version, a guide to reporting and editing the story of money in all its forms, was a 30-page manifesto, inspired by The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White; its last edition was almost 10 times that length, encompassing far more than just financial markets and making it a resource for the world’s leading journalism schools. Looking back, Matt’s starting point was a simple one: Bloomberg would follow standards that were at least as strict as its more established rivals—and often far stricter. This partly reflected the reality of compe- tition. Bloomberg’s journalism is aimed at possibly the most sophisti- cated audience in the world, for whom accuracy is essential: Billions of ix x Introduction dollars can move within seconds of a story being published. From the beginning, Matt made sure that there would never be an opportunity for any of our competitors to claim that we cut corners. Bloomberg News might have started as a guerilla army, but the Bloomberg Way meant that it was a highly trained and disciplined army, one that relied on facts, numbers and credible sources to break news. The Bloomberg Way was always about more than just beating the competition. Its tough standards, and especially its ethical credo, also reflected the values of its author as well as those of the man who employed him. Ever since it first appeared in the then-opaque bond market in 1982, the Bloomberg Terminal has been a force for trans- parency: It gives customers the data they need to make decisions. When Mike Bloomberg rang the self-described “happiest reporter at the Wall Street Journal” on the second Wednesday in November 1989 to ask what it would take to get into the news business, Matt replied with a question of his own. “All right,” I said. “You have just published a story that says the chairman—and I mean chairman—of your biggest customer has taken $5 million from the corporate till. He is with his secretary at a Rio de Janeiro resort, and the secretary’s spurned boyfriend calls to tip you off. You get an independent verification that the story is true. Then the phone rings. The customer’s public relations person says, ‘Kill the story or we will return all the terminals we rent from you.’ What would you do?” “Go with the story,” Mike said. “Our lawyers will love the fees you generate.” It is not unusual for journalists to write about their customers, especially advertisers. But Bloomberg occupies a unique role in finance: We are in a way both its parish newsletter and its journal of record. By putting transparency and independence at the heart of Bloomberg’s journalism from the very beginning, Matt and Mike established something that could last. We will make mistakes—all journalists do—but they will not be ones that spring from bias or commercial interest. Indeed, our only interest is maintaining the value of what we do for the community that we serve—and that comes from telling the story as honestly as we can. Capitalism needs its chronicle—that is our job. Introduction xi Given the success of the Bloomberg Way over the past quarter century, why have we decided to update it? Well, in one way, it is not changing at all. The basic principles are the same: Indeed, the very start of this book’s first chapter sets out Matt’s vision of the Bloomberg Way. It remains our credo, especially when it comes to questions of transparency and independence. The main aim of this edition is to apply those principles across all the platforms where Bloomberg journalism appears—and in many cases to tighten them. When an anchor on Bloomberg TV discusses the profitability of a company, we want him or her to highlight the same numbers as the reporter who covers the company.