October 16, 2007

The five Fs are what we think the most important to Bloomberg News, said Lee Miller, Editor-at-Large of Bloomberg News on Oct. 19th in Tsinghua University.

Lee Miller addressed students in Tsinghua School of Journalism and Communication today and said that it’s “Five Fs” that made Bloomberg News standout.

The “Five Fs” Mr. Miller talked about including: factual , first, fastest, final and future.

The most important factor of a journalist is factual, “ being a journalist, you need to tell the truth and let people trust you,” Lee Miller said, “ otherwise, you can be a fiction-writer.”

Lee Miller said 90 percent of the news is calendar-driven events, “you know it’s going to happen.” And Bloomberg’s way for first word news is to “prepare for the calendar-driven events and write the stories before hand.” Mr. Miller joked, “Similar to being a student, journalists have to do homework on job.”

For getting the news reported with the fastest word, Bloomberg had a headline team of 16 people named the “headline commandos”. The whole work of these people were writing headlines, which were the core for speed when Bloomberg competes with Reuters and Dow Jones. Mr. Miller used the news release of Johnson& Johnson’s earnings report to illustrate efficiency of Bloomberg: today’s Bloomberg News on Johnson& Johnson’s earning report only two seconds after the company’s new release.

About “final”, Mr. Miller said, “Make a story the best it can be, using clear language.” The journalist is a “translator” Miller said,” you should translate slang, jargon and complicated things into simple language and tell people interesting stories.”

“Future” can give people an idea about what to do tomorrow. “We tell story today, but we look into future as much as possible,” Mr. Miller said. He added, Bloomberg gave value, not through opinion but description, to let people‘s life better.

Lee Miller said he enjoyed double fun from being a Bloomberg journalist and from founding the company. Right now, Bloomberg News is one of the leading global providers of data, news and analytics.