Me: “I suppose so.”

Whereas Bloomberg is all over the world. And so when you talk about weight, you know people in Indonesia are not reading The New York Times every day. That’s not the first read. A lot of people in Indonesia are reading Bloomberg their first read every day. A lot of people in New Zealand are reading Bloomberg as their first read everyday. In Australia. In Germany. In France. In Belgium. In Holland. In Italy, okay? In the UK. In Canada. In Brazil, where I was last night, Bloomberg is the first read. So when you talk about weight, let’s go global, and let’s starting comparing Bloomberg to all these other platforms in a global context. And they’re not even in the game.

The thing that you’re missing in your paradigm here is the audience. Our audience is global. It’s 24/7. It’s 365 days a year. We’re writing for the folks back home. We’re not writing for the guys in Congress and the ladies in Congress or the chattering class in New York or Washington, or Columbia University or at Berkeley…

Me: “Oh.”

We are writing for a global audience, and they know it. And the proof that they know it is that they’re spending $1,500 per terminal.

Me: “Right.”


Okay?

Me: “You know even in the newspaper [not sure what my question is here]…

Just scroll down. These are the newspapers that get Bloomberg News, okay? These are the newspapers that get Bloomberg News, okay? This is the aggregate circulation, okay? Including the Times, I might add. Okay, and what you’re not including is how many times Bloomberg writes a story, and it is invented at Bloomberg…Like, I’ll give you an example that Blackrock is gonna buy the bad bank from UBS. Worldwide exclusive three o’clock, two weeks ago. On Bloomberg News …Okay, it was on the front page of the Financial Times a day later. Where did they get it? They got it on Bloomberg … Did they attribute it to Bloomberg? Absolutely not. Does that happen everyday? Absolutely. [An FT spokeswoman declined to comment.] Okay, there is a conceit in the newspaper world that because a real time news organization like Bloomberg breaks something, “Oh that must come from a wire service,” and somehow that can’t possibly be original because it came from a wire service. Well guess what? The lead story [nervous laugh from Czelusniak] the lead story in the Financial Times on Blackrock two week ago was a worldwide exclusive twenty-four hours earlier on the Bloomberg

Me: “That’s bad manners…”

When your talking about setting the agenda and influence the reality is we are setting the agenda. It’s just that the chattering class, which are still hooked on The New York Times, doesn’t quite grasp that because The New York Times doesn’t voluntarily share every day how much content, original content, it gets from Bloomberg that it then decides then to share with its readers and it doesn’t always attribute to Bloomberg and the same thing is true with lots of other newspapers. But you know what? They’re a customer, and I’m happy they pay their bills on time.

Me: “Got it.”

An elevator later transports me back to the Earth’s surface. I find myself on Lexington Avenue holding a Bloomberg gift bag—clock, coffee cup, pen, keychain, Bloomberg Rubik’s Cube. I gratefully unfurl my new Bloomberg umbrella against a cold, drenching rain.

I climb into a taxi. Exhale.