When Bloomberg bought BW last month, expectations were grim—one preliminary report said that Bloomberg was planning to lay off the entire staff. Insiders told us at the time that was "nuts," (which it was), and made vague sounds about not being able to tell how many layoffs would be necessary.

Which was at least mildly hopeful! But the signs were pretty clear: BW's editor left immediately, Bloomberg started canning the magazine's celebrity columnists, and began the early stages of the layoffs on Monday. An internal memo at the time promised "a meeting (in person or by telephone) to learn next steps." Staffers got that yesterday. And 130 of them are gone, including many high-level writers, editors, and some of the mag's most visible columnists:

Most of the columnists were let go, including Inside Wall Street writer Gene Marcial, Media Centric columnist Jon Fine, tech columnist Steve Wildstrom, the longtime Business Outlook columnist Jim Cooper and tech writer Steve Baker, a 23-year veteran.

When you work for the media these days and your first instinct is that the future is dark, you're probably right.
[More on BW layoffs here]

Bartiromo wrote a Q&A column called FaceTime, which consisted of her asking questions of some business guy each week. She's not a bulldog questioner, but she's not incompetent either. Her strongest point was access: Hank Greenberg, Tim Geithner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg have all sat for her in the past month.

Her downsides: She's perceived as friendly to CEOs, which is part of the reason she gets that access. And whatever they pay her for that column is certainly inflated by her own celebrity, which is hard to justify when Bloomberg's getting ready to lay off a bunch of BW staffers. They'll be able to get good access with a much cheaper columnist, anyhow; who else will CEOs rattle off talking points to, bloggers? LOL!

Don't feel bad, Maria. Gurl U no Wall St luvs U no matta wut. Gurl let Jamie Dimon buy U a drank.

Penned by one Mr. Ben Sisario—whose writing is typically quite wonderful—the song is broken down as such:

...roughly 50 percent rote Jay-Z chest-beating ("I'm the new Sinatra"), 30 percent tourist-friendly travelogue ("Statue of Liberty, long live the World Trade") and the rest a glorious Alicia Keys hook.

Which is true! Jay-Z goes from the Bronx to Tribeca and back; most people who live in the West Village like Jay-Z think they get nosebleeds above 14th Street and apply for visas every time they cross the East River. For all intents and purposes, Jay-Z has probably visited more locales in New York than Sinatra ever did, even goddamn Williamsburg. Sinatra was from Hoboken, Hov is from Marcy. And Jay-Z can even get the hardest reservation in New York, a tabled at famed mobster hangout Rao's (as evidenced by his D.O.A. video), something only someone like Sinatra could pull off back in the day. And Sisario makes a great point, noting that when you're Jay-Z, who do you beef with? Where do you go from here?

But there's a more basic explanation for this new rivalry: If you are the king of rap, and you've already topped all the charts, trounced all other M.C.'s, and even run a major record company, what's the next challenge? Where do you go? Answer: You start beefs with pantheon heroes, thus muscling your way into their realm. And it seems to be working pretty well: "The Blueprint 3" has sold 1.2 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and after eight weeks it is still in the Top 10.

Let's be honest: Jay-Z's stature, at this point, is a little absurd. He could've had a fighting chance against Bloomberg if he were on the ballot; he surely would've gotten a more ringing endorsement from this website than Billy Talen, for one thing. But he needs to catch paper, and he needs the mayor in his pocket to do that, and the only rapper trying to start fights with him is Beanie Siegel, who, exactly. So who does Jay-Z beef with? Sinatra. Obviously. But is Jay-Z's anthem as utilitarian as Sinatra's?

"New York, New York" is built around a handful of memorable phrases ("I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps") that resonate with a universality perfect for a baseball stadium. Ms. Keys supplies that ingredient in "Empire State of Mind," singing somewhat trite slogans ("These streets will make you feel brand new") in a huge, rousing voice. Yet like all Jay-Z songs, "Empire" is, in the end, solely about Jay-Z. And while his personality may fill Yankee Stadium more persuasively than any other pop star, would 50,000 fans ever have the timing, or the memory, to recite "Say what-up to Ty-Ty, still sippin' Mai Tais/Sittin' courtside, Knicks and Nets give me high-five"?

For better or worse, I'm willing to bet that there's a significant difference in the number of people who can rattle off four out of five members of the Rat Pick as opposed to the number of people who can tell you what a Ty-Ty is, though both groups of people definitely have no idea why they should care about Joey Bishop.

Then again, rap is crossing over into audiences who'd never listened to it before—primarily, more adults, who were once the kids that grew up on it—and was "New York, New York" ever a song of the people, or was it always a song of rich privilege? Sure, there's a peasant's, hustler's tone to it, and sure, as Sisario makes clear, Sinatra came from the 'hood, too.

Real talk (oh yes): more people have heard "New York, New York." But what Sisario only hints at is that Sinatra's song will only be heard on one kind of radio station. Jay-Z's will be heard on at least three.

Derek Jeter, a person, walks out to Jay-Z's song. The Yankees—the rich, evil organization with an administration even Yankees fans detest—play "New York, New York" when games end. Rap like Jay-Z's is becoming more accessible to more people, while kids and adults alike aren't exactly going to be (and have never been) bumping Sinatra. Some people will call this a shame. Others will call it progress. I call it a win-win situation.

[Photo via Getty Images]

According to an article on Bloomberg's website, the average stage hand at the New York institution made an average of $430,543 last year. Yes, that's right. $400K. Dennis O'Connell, who oversees the props made $530,044, the most of anyone on the five-man crew that oversees the on-stage operations. You should have spent more time hanging out with the theater nerds.

Clive Gillinson, the artistic and executive director of the three Carnegie stages in Midtown, makes about twice that $946,581. The only people who aren't raking it in are the musicians and singers, who usually pull down $20,000 a night after years and years of training. So, yes, we're happy for the people who make a nice fat check for what is essentially manual labor.

But you could hire a dozen unemployed journalists for the money they're spending on stage hands. Which is a good thing, because that's about as many keyboard-punchers you'd need to lift as much as one stage hand. How did this happen? Bloomberg attributes it to a strong union, the Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Would they be interested in taking over the Freelancers Guild?

[Image via Getty]

NBCM stands for Natixis Bleichroeder Capital Management and Rovzar writes, "the worker in question has been touting it on his Bloomberg header. If it's not real, we don't want to know."

15:21:03 NBCM WORKER: HI
15:21:03 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: Thank you for using Bloomberg HELP! We have received your question, and a live representative will be with you momentarily. Thank you for your patience.
15:21:09 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: hello
15:21:51 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: how can I assist?
15:22:03 NBCM WORKER: any ideas on how we can get this kid out of the hot air balloon over colorado?
15:22:08 NBCM WORKER: b/c i am totally consumed by this
15:22:22 NBCM WORKER: and noone at my work is offering anything sensible
15:23:07 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: I wish I knew of a simple solution
15:23:25 NBCM WORKER: i mean is this helium going to slowly leeak out?
15:23:36 NBCM WORKER: or should we send the seals in with some chutes?
15:24:01 NBCM WORKER: and where are the parents in all this. im sorry to be venting. i just feel like i dont have anyone to talk to
15:24:38 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: please talk to me about it
15:24:49 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: I feel the pain.. I wonder that the kid is thinking up there
15:25:00 NBCM WORKER: this issue is bigger than just kids in hot air balloons
15:25:12 NBCM WORKER: its a lack of parenting in this country, its dispicable

Click here to read the rest.

There's been talk of insular Bloomberg gutting BusinessWeek and moving the financial information company's own staff; even if things don't go that far, it's hard to imagine the editor atop the financially troubled magazine finding much of a leadership for himself at Bloomberg.

(Pic: Adler, Getty Images.)

• Stephanie Pratt was busted for a DUI. I woke up late again. Are you surprised on either account? [TMZ]
  
  
• Roman Polanski got removed from Swiss jail for an unknown medical condition (it's probably "I Wanna Get The Fuck Out Of Dodge-itis"). I know this is where I'm supposed to be like I HOPE THEY PUT A SCALPEL UP HIS ASS but (A) honestly I'll save that for the mob rule and (B) they'd probably use a tiny corkscrew instead. Get it? [NYDN]
  
  
• Two books are being written about Mickey Rourke, and both of them detail how he's completely obsessed with the mafia and being a mafia groupie. Apparently, he was hanging out with John Gotti in 1996 when Gotti was arrested, but, uh, wait. There are two separate books being written about Mickey Rourke? The fact that two separate publishers gave the go-ahead for two separate books about Rourke is kind of incredible. Someone should write a book about that. [NYP]
  
  
• OH MY GODDDDD Rush and Molloy, the Boris and Natasha-esque gossip team who front the New York Daily News' Sunday gossip page, have yet again set their moose and squirrel sights on the most boring possible scoop: Michael Jackson's shady doctor of death, Conrad Murray, is looking for a book deal. (A) No shit and (B) who cares? More about the "tragic" ending of The Hills, plz. [NYDN]
  
  
• Lindsay Lohan can't tell the difference between a cake shaped like a giant perfume bottle and a giant perfume bottle. I would try to explain how we came to this breaking news, but the anecdote's so patently ridiculous I can actually feel the weight of my cranium lighten having just toasted a few brain cells by reading it. To think, I could've used those on glue. [Page Six]
  
  
• Again, Daily News, really, you guys are lacking in the gossip department on the weekends. Ben Widdicombe, where you at, son? I'm only here two days a week. [Oh, that's right, he quit like, last April or something, but I wouldn't know that because who gives a shit about the NYDN gossip pages any more when Boris and Natasha are your big show?] Anyway: "Michael Jackson's children thrive in more normal childhood after life with King of Pop dad." You're joking, right? This is a headline? They could live in the New Museum and they'd have a more normal life than they did with Dad. Jesus.[NYDN]
  
  
• Penn Badgley has ten secrets the Daily News has "uncovered." He didn't graduate high school, he likes tequila, he forgets the words to the National Anthem, America's Best Dance Crew is his guilty pleasure, and he hates L.A. No, I'm serious, there're five more where that came from, and I'm not clicking over to read them. Thank you, New York Daily News, for basically describing most of America, including me. Unless the next five are "he enjoys huffing paint, molesting animals who're just a few inches too big for the petting zoo, can shove an entire Slinky up his ass, will beat me in backgammon, and plays the vacuum a la Jon Fishman," I could really care less. [NYDN]
  
  
• This is awesome: Shia LaDouche didn't show up for the New York, I Love You premiere and it's being blamed on mean old cokeface Oliver Stone not letting him out to go to the premiere while shooting Wall Street 2. They then note that Scarlett Johansson didn't go, either, because her segment was cut out of the film. Whoops! But you know who those suckers missed? the Post goes on to ask. No guys, please, tell us. Let's make them jealous: "They missed Cloris Leachman, director Mira Nair (who's helming the upcoming "Amelia"), Rocco DiSpirito, Peter Facinelli and porn star Savanna Samson." BAHHHHHAHAHA [Page Six]
  
  
• Woody Allen is now shamelessly casting the world's hottest women and doesn't give a fuuuhhhck what you think about it. Not only is he putting them in movies, but he got Penelope an Oscar, suckers, and he did it in Spain by putting her in a suggested threesome with ScarJo and Javy Bardy. Beat that. Now he wants to make a movie starring Andriana Lima in Rio. Okay, the last few we understand, but just because Adriana Lima's been on an episode of How I Met Your Mother and one of Ugly Betty does not mean you should put her at the front of your new movie, Woody (and yes, truly: Woody). To balance out her skill you're going to have to cast F. Murray Abraham as her love interest, or something. Which I'd pay $10 to see. [Page Six]
  
  
• This Page Six item begins: "Now that "The Hills" is coming to a tragic end, its stars are busy promoting themselves to find new gigs." What the shit? A "tragic end"? Is this like the end of Dead at 21 where they all just fizzle out or get killed by the shadow (Reptilian, obvi) government? What the hell have I been missing on that show? Seriously. [Page Six]
  
  
• Bloomberg is Turning Japanese! BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM, BAM BAM BAM, BAM! EEEEE! [Page Six]
  
  
• New Yorkers, this one's for you: Vincent Kartheiser and one of the other guys from Mad Men—I don't know who it was, I don't watch that show, because nothing ever happens on it—were seen eating at DBGB, which just scored (a low) two stars from the new New York Times dining critic Sam Sifton, who we need to kidnap in the middle of the night with Adam Platt and Jay "Six Shooter" Cheshes and Ryan Sutton and get him really shitfaced at the Cherry Tavern and make him eat everything off the value menu at McDonalds at the end of the night. Hazing! It happens! The dude's too soft, let's toughen that pussy up! Anyway, the only other important thing you need to know about this item is that Vincent Kartheiser was in the massively underrated Larry Clark movie, Another Day In Paradise, which also starred James Woods saying "fuck" or some kind of variant of it every three seconds and Melanie Griffith being punched in the face by James Woods (this is the most epic moment in the film). I kid you not. Watch it, now. [Page Six]
  
  
• A little girl helped Pamela Anderson carry around the train of her dress at a party because she had asked Anderson if she could, and a bunch of downer assholes like me are being all like, ohhhh, what a biiiiitch, I can't believe she's promoting child labor, Godddddd. But that's a dumb joke and honestly it's really cute that Anderson would let a kid do this. See! We're not all bad! The funny thing is that Tommy Lee's now going to try to get someone to hold up his three foot dong for him whenever he pisses and hopefully it won't be a kid. Seriously, though, you can get some great intern candidates for that kind of thing coming out of the ACC schools. [Page Six]

And oh, what the hell? Good morning, everyone! This day's going to be wonderful. Please sing along:

[Photo via Bauer-Griffin]

Businessweek's Tom Lowry reports:

But knowledgeable sources say that Bloomberg's cash offer is in the $2 million to $5 million range and that it has agreed to assume liabilities, including potential severance payments. It remains to be seen how much of the magazine's 400-plus staff Bloomberg plans to cut, but reports of a planned scorched earth campaign are overblown, say sources.

Indeed, our own sources also shot down a report earlier this week that Bloomberg had plans to dump virtually the entire staff at BW. Which is not to say that the magazine's employees should feel safe; it's still early in the process, but Bloomberg is reportedly considering a range of options including merging its own website with Bloomberg's. All signs point to probably layoffs at BW out of necessity, but Bloomberg is almost certainly not going to be as ruthless in cutbacks as a more financially-strapped buyer would have been.

Several million for the magazine is not so bad, by today's standards. By the standards of, say, five years ago, it's awful.

WWD says so today:

Some describe the atmosphere inside of the magazine's offices as business as usual, while others are more resigned and have begun packing up their things. Bloomberg LP remains the front-runner, although the company is expected to only take on the BusinessWeek name and Web site, and none of its staff or bureaus.

Jesus, that's pretty harsh. WWD goes on to say that Bloomberg would essentially toss BW's magazine staff out and replace it with current Bloomberg employees, and the only real sticking point left is who'll pay the severance for all the BW layoffs.

But another informed source we spoke to called WWD's version "nuts." The bidders on Businessweek have only had a chance to do very preliminary assessments of the company's staff, and final decisions on layoffs would come only after a winner had been declared and allowed to do more exploration of the company's direction. But the winning bidder would have a commitment to keeping BW in operation as a print magazine (and a decent one), our source said—otherwise, why bid on the company at all? That would mean, at the very least, not coming in and gutting the company's editorial side immediately.

So, Businessweek employees: You should certainly be living in fear. But maybe not total fear. A Bloomberg purchase of BW would probably not result in immediate mass layoffs of most BW staffers, to be replaced by Bloomberg's own current employees. Although some of that could certainly happen! On the other hand, current BW staffers could then have a chance to jump over to Bloomberg—one of the few major media companies not currently mired in mass budget cuts.

Logic seems to dictate that there will be layoffs once Businessweek is sold. After all, the place isn't doing too well with its current staffing levels. The question is how many. A buyer like Bloomberg that could afford to spare a few resources would presumably be a bit better for the BW staff than a buyer intent on slashing right away—which could mean a drastic reduction in frequency for the magazine and a skeleton staff. We'll see!

But if you work at Businessweek and you get an outside job offer soon, you might wanna take it.

Mort Zuckerman and one private equity firm have dropped out of the bidding for Businessweek, leaving only Bloomberg and ZelnickMedia as the contenders. Bloomberg will probably win it. It's a dubious prize. But he can afford it.


What media company went bankrupt today? CanWest, the Canadian media conglomerate that owns The National Post. Tune in tomorrow for another edition of "What media company went bankrupt today?"


Look, recently departed Page Sixer Paula Froelich is now blogging for HuffPo. This one's about the funemployed life of the "professional novelist." It sounds a lot like being a "professional blogger" except with disposable income.

Time Inc., Hearst, Conde Nast, and other big publishers are totally serious about owning the digital space and all that. They're reportedly "just weeks" away from launching their own sort of E-reader, that will E-read magazines, but in a super special magazine way. I don't know why this really needs to exist but I do hope it succeeds, cause the mags could really use the money.

This is the very first paragraph, okay:

Facing a banking collapse that was unlike anything it had seen since the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve created $2 trillion of assets and debts during the past year to rescue the nation's financial institutions. But it did not make clear to taxpayers just where all of this money went.

And that's when journalism died.

The NYT sent a trained journalist to stroll amongst the masses out at a park, in New York City. She found that—despite the fact that smokers are nasty baby killers who should just go stand over there (no, farther over there)—people are not so hot on banning citizens from engaging in solitary activities in the park. What's next, masturbation?

"Where else are people going to go where they can enjoy themselves because it's free? Except the jail or the park, that's it."

A man can't enjoy himself in the park or in jail these days! Mayor Bloomberg is defending this nannyish notion, but, come on, did you see his speech at his "party" last night? All the speechwriters in town can't hide the fact that you're a nerd, Mayor Mike. A big one.
[Pic via]

This auction is allegedly ending early next week, so Bloomberg's late entry is presumably some sort of tactical move. Sez Keith Kelly:

Mayor Mike's company is now seen as the frontrunner, replacing Lazard boss Bruce Wasserstein, owner of New York Magazine and The Deal.

Jon Fine says that Bloomberg passed on BW already once before jumping back in now. There are at least four bidders in the hunt now. And, don't forget: Bloomberg is also a "potential candidate" to buy the Down Jones Indexes, when News Corp decides to sell them off. They're throwing money around like...frisbees!

[Keith Kelly broke this news, followed closely by Jon Fine. For the record!]

After working 12-hour days, six days a week as the New York Post's metro editor, Colarusso made a loud, surprise departure, walking out of the tabloid's newsroom one night. Then there was his stint as managing editor of Business Insider, which ended after just four months, a departure noted by Reuters blogger Felix Salmon. There's a chance the intensely competitive newsroom at Bloomberg will be a good fit for Colarusso; if it isn't, we trust his colleagues will be made promptly aware of that.

[via FishbowlNY]

(Pic: Magazine.org via Observer)

McCaughey's schtick, as described by James Fallows, is to pose as a disinterested, objective researcher who is just shocked and dismayed to find something insane and evil in a piece of legislation supported by a Democratic president.

And then she sits down to write a very serious and nonpartisan and concerned piece of analysis of this evil thing in the legislation that she made up. And then some respectable outlet publishes her serious analysis. And then, within minutes, partisan Republican columnists, talk radio hosts, politicians, and operatives are disseminating talking points taken directly from that serious piece of entirely made-up bullshit analysis.

Her first stab at derailing this year's health care debate came with a Bloomberg column about fictitious health care rationing hidden in the stimulus bill.

In a July 24 column for the New York Post, McCaughey smeared Ezekiel Emanuel (the nice Emanuel brother) as a murderous "deadly doctor."

In a radio interview with Fred Thompson, McCaughey got more explicit, wholly inventing mandatory death panel sessions American seniors would have to face every five years.

And, thus, "death panels." From Betsy to Rush to Sarah Palin to Chuck Grassley to your own old relatives forwarding you crazy shit, probably.

Of course, she's been at this forever. In 1994, McCaughey worked for the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank. And then she wrote a piece for The New Republic about how the Clinton health care plan would not allow people to buy health care coverage outside the government-run plan. This, obviously, was false. George Will picked up on it, adding nonsense about jail terms.

(Andrew Sullivan edited The New Republic from 1991 through 1996. In 1994, Sullivan was on a roll, publishing both the objectively racist pseudoscience of The Bell Curve and Betsy McCaughey's No Exit. This was all before Ruth Shalit and Stephen Glass. Current editor Franklin Foer apologized for the McCaughey piece shortly after assuming his position. Sullivan never really has. McCaughey's story was really more the fault of owner/"editor-in-chief" Marty Peretz, of course, because he had a psychotic hatred of Bill Clinton.)

So. After that one lying story full of lies made her famous, Al D'Amato told George Pataki to make her Lietenant Governor of New York. She did not get along with Pataki, and she famously, weirdly, stood up for the entirety of Pataki's 1996 State of the State address. In 1997, Pataki dropped her from the ticket with a nasty public letter and she decided to become a Democrat in order to run against him. She ended up on the Liberal Party ticket, and lost, obviously, and then she moved to DC to work for the Hudson Institute, another right-wing think tank.

So she is a known liar and an elected Republican politician (her brief and bizarre stint as a vengeful Liberal party candidate aside), and here she is still forcing people to argue with chimerical fantasies instead of legitimate criticisms of progressive legislation.

We are hard pressed to come up any equivalent figure on "the left," who openly and intentionally lies in the service of her partisan arguments, and who continues to do so with relative impunity, in major publications, long after the lies are exposed.

A Bloomberg employee tells us:

Bloomberg recently introduced "metrics,'' an arbitrary, computerized numbers game for judging employees' performance. One yardstick is the number of newspaper pickups a reporter has. When one Bloomberg journalist recently pointed out his good showing in the IHT, a senior editor replied with a North Korean-style straight face, "the Herald Tribune doesn't count for pickups.''

And why wouldn't the IHT be counted? Our tipster says it's because Winkler "declared it off-limits" because he's still angry about the paper signing a contract with rival Reuters two years ago. Is that The Bloomberg Way? We've emailed Bloomberg for comment and we'll update if we hear from them.

UPDATE: A Bloomberg spokesperson's comment: "It's not true. Newspaper pickup is not a metric."

Among the "exclusives" the company has been bragging about internally came June 1, when London critic Richard Vines scooped the Associated Press and Reuters by a full minute on the result of the televised Britain's Got Talent competition: Internet sensation Susan Boyle lost to dance troupe Diversity. You can find the bragging and the "story" reprinted below.

It turns out, our tipster reports, that only about 500 people read this story, and no wonder: Anyone in need of the freshest Got Talent information needed only turn on their TV; there would have been no point in waiting for Bloomberg to route the results through its terminals. Our tipster:

One way of expressing this is that 12m people knew this apparently crucial result immediately by dint of live free-to-air TV, while 500 poor souls who pay $2000 a month for the system were totally in the dark for at least five minutes.

That's eminently logical, to be sure, but at Bloomberg it's the exception that proves the rule: The company remains as obsessed with metrics as its founder Michael Bloomberg, and, within the firm's command-and-control culture, numbers tend to trump reason.

BN FIRST: Susan Boyle Loses in Final of U.K. Talent Show
2009-06-01 18:56:25.35 GMT

((Richard Vines was the first to report on the result
of a U.K. talent show contest. AP and Reuters followed a
minute later. Editors: Sylvia Wier, Christopher Wellisz.
Team leader: Mark Beech.))
By Richard Vines
May 31 (Bloomberg) — Susan Boyle, the church worker
from Scotland whose voice and life story captured the
attention of people around the world, was defeated in the
final of the U.K. television talent show that made her
famous.
To read the Bloomberg story, go to {NSN KKIKQ907SXKX }


-0- Jun/01/2009 18:56 GMT

A Bloomberg source passed us an internal Q1 memo. (Click here to read the whole thing.) It says the news division beat all first-quarter targets and increased "its headline speed against the main real-time competition." We have no idea what that means; maybe ask a Scientologist.

We do get this part, though, where Bloomberg clearly brags about nearly tripling the number of stories broken in Q1 and getting double the number of "follows" in competing media:

"Competitors followed Bloomberg News stories more than 2,700 times —

more than twice as often as in all of 2008({NI FOLLOW }. The Wall

Street Journal alone cited us 235 times. The New York Times mentioned

us 135 times. Reuters followed 520 times."



The 1,492 journalists at Bloomberg News broke more than 13,000

stories, almost three times the total for all of 2008. Our speed

increased, too: Bloomberg News beat its main real-time competitor on

more than 70 percent of all major stories, compared with 54 percent at

the beginning of the year."

The trouble with these stats: They're generated by the very Bloomberg staff who stand to earn kudos and bonuses off them, a major conflict of interests. The financial information company is growing more metrics conscious every quarter as it strives toward a long-term goal of $10 billion in annual revenue, our tipster tells us, increasing the incentive to flag stories with internal "FIRST" and "FOLLOW" tags.

Our tipster believes the tags are applied more generously than last year, and Bloomberg's stats bear this out: To triple "FIRSTs," reporters either worked three times harder this year — doubtful, given how intensely competitive Bloomberg's culture has always been — or the tag is being applied more liberally.

But editors who fudged the numbers may have burned themselves: Bloomberg, our tipster claims, will use Q1 2009 as a benchmark for future performance, rather than a period from 2008, as employees previously believed. If that's true, the suspicious Q1 metrics will set a very difficult performance bar going forward.

We've asked Bloomberg for comment and will update the post when we hear back. UPDATE: Bloomberg's response, in full: "The report is accurate." Thank you, comrades.

[Full Memo]

(Pic via)

It's so awesome when the media take a regular old term you use every day like "empathy" and decides it's Important. All of a sudden one innocuous word launches a million articles, blogs,etc. Sort of like when the Obamas said "yay" with their hands closed and knuckles touching, and everyone dropped their jaw in amazement. Fast forward a year: National Fistbump Day! For those interested, I've got my fingers crossed hoping "canoodle" is next to receive the treatment. Canoodling has important socio-political ethnocultural implications and demands exploring! (Immigrants are canoodling, sources say.) Next week!

Anyword, we present the Political Empathy Matrix with a sprinkling of this week's stories. This "Us" vs "Them" axis is the true litmus of an empathetic worldview. "Us" is inclusive, an invitation to all: Yes, Sonia, from the Bronx, be a justice on the high court with us! In contrast, Keith Olbermann, for example, champions an exclusive kind of liberalism. Not fit for the likes of the people who toil here in the tubes of this very website.

So there you go. Please connect the rest of my dots in the comments.