The Hidden Newsmakers in Finance: Bloomberg Insists on More Women, Diverse Sourcing
October 02, 2018
By Laura Zelenko, Senior Executive Editor For Diversity, Talent, Standards and Training, Bloomberg News
Look at almost any conventional media outlet, and you’ll see women underrepresented as sources. Focus just on business and finance stories, and they’re even less visible, an omission of perspective that Bloomberg’s news organization is not willing to tolerate. And so we have rolled out a global plan to boost the number of women and other diverse sources that we quote in stories, invite on Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg radio and feature in our events’ panels.
Bloomberg L.P. Chairman Peter Grauer and I recently launched our New Voices initiative in Hong Kong, following similar launches in New York, London and Toronto. The program provides one-on-one media training for 12 top women executives in finance and business in all four cities — for a total of 48 — assisted by local trainers from Burson Cohn & Wolfe, with the goal of getting them TV-ready for interviews on Bloomberg TV and other outside TV outlets. Our pilot program for 12 financial services industry executives in New York earlier this year was so successful that several have already appeared for the first time on our air, some more than once.
The media training focuses on the supply side of this challenge, but there’s much that our newsroom can do on its own to help make our coverage better and more competitive through more diverse sourcing. Globally, media cite women as sources on front pages about 20% of the time; those we cite in stories often determines whom we call for on-air interviews. The BBC has started the 50-50 initiative to push for gender equality among on-air guests on every one of its programs. The Financial Times has an initiative to engage with more women readers.
Metrics are also a critical part of our effort. We have parsed the data, created tracking methods, set goals and are holding managers accountable. And we are seeing progress.
* In the first quarter of this year, women represented 10% of the total number of external guests interviewed on Bloomberg TV. They now represent 15%. Our short-term aspiration is to reach 30%.
* In the first quarter of this year, women represented 28% of the total number of Bloomberg journalists we interviewed on Bloomberg TV. They now represent 34%. Our short-term aspiration is to reach 50%.
* In the first quarter of this year, women represented roughly 2% of sources quoted or cited in Bloomberg stories running on our TOP, or front, pages. In the most recent month of tracking, they now represent 6.2% and we’re increasing the number 9.5% a week.
There are other signs of improvement:
* The percentage of women panelists at our Bloomberg LIVE events has almost doubled from 19% in 2017 to 32% in 2018.
* We’ve also increased our global database of women experts from 500 names at the start of this year to more than 2,300.
We enhanced our publishing tool to allow editors to tag stories that quote women. Not only does this enable us to count these stories, our newsroom can reference them to find relevant sources not only for guests on Bloomberg Television or Bloomberg radio, but also for panels at our Bloomberg Live events. And we’ve set a new policy that states Bloomberg journalists can only join panels where there is gender diversity.
We’re proactively trying to address the challenge of promoting more expert women commentators, and ultimately, other diverse voices as well. By expanding the media training, we’re also finding welcome support among companies that are actively trying to promote their own women executives — new newsmakers whose perspectives until now have been underrepresented.
This, in turn, should provide role models for others in the industry to follow, and, hopefully, leading to durable change.
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