March 7, 2016
This month marks the debut of a reimagined Bloomberg Markets magazine. With a new format, look, and editorial approach, “The Journal of Global Finance” is laser-focused on thought leadership for an elite audience. Below, Bloomberg Markets Editor Joel Weber (@joelwebershow) exclusively shares why it’s all about “service and surprise,” what his favorite stories are and why he wants readers to rip the magazine apart – literally.
Q: Bloomberg Markets’ new issue has a very different look and feel – matte, minimal, elegant. What else is distinctive?
A: We’re unique in that we go to Bloomberg Terminal customers – I can’t think of any other magazine that has a distribution channel as powerful as that. On the one hand, we’re trying to serve them – on the other hand, we want to surprise them.
Q: You’re introducing a new in-depth Q&A feature – Jamie Dimon gave you an unprecedented 90-minute sit down. Does that fall under both headings?
A: We began with the idea that there’s an opportunity for print to resonate – but it has to acknowledge that it’s different. We realized that a bi-monthly affords a different opportunity for deep engagement. What a person like Jamie Dimon says is as relevant today as it is two months, or six months, or a year from now, because he’s an authoritative figure in our world. And the rest is our data, our analysis – content that leads the thinking about what’s really going on, and that provides an amazing tool for our audience.
Q: And that’s connected back to the Bloomberg Terminal.
A: Everything it has to offer – the news, the data – it’s all coming together [in Bloomberg Markets]. It’s not just a news product; we’re now pulling in Bloomberg Intelligence [the company’s research arm] for example.
Q: So, the magazine helps readers do their jobs better?
A: On the other side of every Terminal is a human. However you interact with the markets, we’ve got something for you. One of my favorite stories [in this issue] is about an investor who made connections, some of them through the Terminal, that allowed him to create change on a global scale. Our journalists were covering the story for Bloomberg News – and I asked them to take a step back and write the meta-story for Bloomberg Markets. It’s the definitive version of the story, it helps make sense of the world. It’s looking at the forest, not the trees.
Q: You’ve created a curated experience – and at the same time, everything feels of-the-moment relevant. How do you do that?
A: Our staff is all of Bloomberg – we’re tapped into the mother vein. You can feel the pulse beat, and it’s a pretty wicked pulse! It’s more than just news. When you’re in that flow, you realize there are topics, moments, people, and companies that you get curious about, that you want to give the time and space that it deserves. Because we have our finger on the pulse, we’re able to tell the story – and we can sit with it, shine a spotlight on it. We hope readers will be surprised by what we’re revealing.
But it all comes back to the markets. The front of the book is dripping in functionality – that’s the most important thing we do. Our goal was, let’s make pages that are so good you want to rip them out, apply them to your life, and benefit from them. You can immediately use them. That, to me, is service.