Building a pipeline: Bloomberg’s Business & Financial Journalism Program

Information has the power to transform economies. From reliable data to accurate reporting, access to information plays a critical role in promoting transparency and accountability—ultimately helping to advance markets, inspire new investment, and encourage economic development. It was based on these beliefs that Bloomberg was founded more than 35 years ago, and informs the company’s investment in its Global Business and Financial Journalism Education Initiative.

To further advance these goals and increase a pipeline of diverse journalistic talent, Bloomberg News and Corporate Philanthropy partnered to create the Bloomberg Global Business and Financial Journalism Education Initiative in 2003. Working with philanthropic organizations and academic institutions, the program supports a range of global initiatives centered on reporting about financial markets and economies, using the expertise of our employees and business resources to create lasting impact.

The program now includes 29 initiatives across the globe, including course materials specific to Bloomberg. The initiatives include:

• Post-graduate Master’s degree in Business Journalism
• Six-month post-graduate Executive Training Program in business and financial reporting
• Community-based programs to introduce students to careers in journalism
• One-week immersive course in business reporting

Building a pipeline

The impact of these programs is demonstrated most clearly within our own organization. The Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa (BMIA) was launched in 2014 to advance business journalism and increase market transparency on the continent. With an initial focus on Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, close to 600 journalists and mid-level professionals have completed the program (as of 2019)—four of which are now our Bureau Chiefs in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana.

Bloomberg News continues to tap into the pipeline of talented journalists from these programs to build a better organization. We spoke with four program graduates from around the world to get their perspectives:

Maria Elena Vizcaino, New York

I was born and raised in Venezuela, and moved to Florida when I was in high school. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a journalist, which came from watching journalists on the front lines of demonstrations when I was in Caracas. I wanted to be on the front lines too, talking to people and telling their stories to hold the powerful accountable.

I was part of the UNC-Bloomberg Diversity Program in May of 2019. The program was advertised through the UNC School of Media and Journalism, and I applied because I felt it would be an enriching experience to end my undergraduate career, as business journalism hadn’t caught my eye until my senior year of college. I started at Bloomberg as an intern on the munis team last fall, and as a reporter on the rotation program in January. My first rotation was on the mining and metals team, and I’m on the FX/rates team now.

The Bloomberg program is special because Bloomberg News is a special place. Being exposed to how Bloomberg News structures its coverage is similar to being exposed to markets themselves, how they’re broken down, how they function, and how they interact with government and businesses, so it was enlightening.

What really struck me during the program was that the instructors were open about not being experts at first on the beats they covered. They became experts on the job, like good journalists do. It made business journalism approachable, and made it feel okay to not know something—as long as you’re willing to learn and ask questions.

Ronojoy Mazumdar, Mumbai

As the son of a diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, I lived in several different countries growing up, and was always interested in economics and how policy and markets shape different societies. So, when my mother spotted an ad about the new Bloomberg Business and Financial Journalism Training Program at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai—the first of its kind in India—it was an easy decision to apply.

The program was special because of the amount of practical work, reporting and writing, and the incredible exposure we got to guest speakers from Bloomberg newsrooms and beyond. Using the Terminal also made the training sessions very engaging, as we were working with fresh data to practice writing stories, just as reporters in the real world had done days before. The program taught me the importance of being prepared, asking questions, paying attention to detail, working as a team, and taking a machete to your copy to stay on your editor’s good side!

Following the program, I joined Bloomberg as an intern in New Delhi in the summer of 2018, and then joined full-time in the Mumbai bureau, where I now cover India’s stock market.

Nicole Sy, Hong Kong

My family emigrated from the Philippines to Canada when I was six years old, and during my studies I developed a real love for developmental economics. But as an Economics major graduating in the aftermath of the Great Recession, I spent a year working to find the right balance between business, journalism, and culture.

The Bloomberg Business and Financial Journalism Training Program was the perfect combination of those factors, and more. As a bonus, it was in the wildest, most fascinating and exciting place I knew: China. I emailed Tsinghua University about the program and the rest is history.

What made the Bloomberg program so special is that it brought diverse young minds from all over the world together into one classroom. We all got to learn from each other and some of the top journalists in what was (and arguably still is) one of fastest-evolving environments in modern times. It also taught me that in order to grow, I needed to step out of my comfort zone.

Outside this comfort zone, I learned to hustle: starting a podcast with friends, working as a correspondent, and pitching just about every China editor on all sorts of stories.

I’m now part of the QuickTake team based in Hong Kong, where I produce video content for our platforms. The work ranges from animating charts and graphs, producing Instagram Story videos, or filming our own content.

Anthony Osae-Brown, Nigeria

I’m part Ghanaian by parentage, but was raised and schooled in Nigeria. And that schooling is where my interest in journalism began, when I wrote an article for my high school magazine and got paid for it. From that moment, I always wanted to write for a living—which I got to do for a magazine immediately after leaving school.

I was working in the communication unit of a bank when I heard about the BMIA program. It came at a time when I was thinking of getting back into journalism and felt the program offered just the right platform to do so. And it was a magical moment for me when the Terminal was explained to us. I appreciated the depth of resources available so much that when I became the editor of BusinessDay (Nigeria’s largest business and economic newspaper), I insisted that we acquire a Terminal.

The most important lesson I took from the program was how to tap complex data to write simple stories that help people understand concepts they normally wouldn’t grasp. I take this lesson into my work today, as our Bloomberg News Bureau Chief in Nigeria, where I coordinate reporting from Africa’s largest economy.

Further, I would add that business and financial journalism is largely about understanding data and how it applies to people’s daily lives. Up-and-coming talent needs to love numbers and how they are used, as well as learning the language of modern journalism more generally: coding, graphic design, video editing. Remember that it’s not just about writing a good story, it’s also about how the story is presented to your audience.

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