Introduction

On the second Wednesday in November 1989, I got a phone call that would mark the birth of an implausible news organization led by an unlikely publisher: “Hi, it’s Bloomberg. I need some advice. What would it take to get into the news business?” Michael Rubens Bloomberg, former partner of Salomon Brothers and now president and founder of Bloomberg Financial Markets, was asking me, at the time probably the happiest reporter at the Wall Street Journal.

The question was intriguing. Bloomberg had no experience in journalism. His almost two decades of selling securities would prove to be an advantage. The computer terminal he created in 1982 with his name on it already used an array of historical and current data to show investors and ...

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