The thrust behind Bloomberg LP has always been the premium it puts on carting a wealth of indispensable services to its Wall Street subscribers. Now, the news service will be taking its New York-honed talents to The Hill with Bloomberg Government, The New York Times reports. It’s an ambitious attempt to infiltrate the fee-based information industry that’s long been dominated by Washington, D.C.-based publications such as Congressional Quarterly and National Journal.
Once its expansion is complete, Bloomberg Government will have 300 journalists and economic experts staffed in the nation’s capital. Subscriptions will cost $5,700 a year, with government users receiving a discount.
Those who pony up for a subscription will be privy to, among other tools, vast amounts of aggregated stories, in-house analysis and research and a Congressional staff database.
If the brash strategy works, Congressional Quarterly and National Journal — as well as places like Politico — won’t be the only D.C. institutions to be endangered: lobbyists who are paid to provide government figures with this type of information may find themselves outpaced by this well-oiled hybrid of of news service and database tool.
Health care lobbyist Jean Higgens, for example, nervously joked that the service could render her job obsolete. “If I live outside Washington, this is a pretty big universe of information I pay a lobbyist to know,” she told The Times. “I guess I think at the end of the day a computer can’t take someone to Capitol Hill to meet a member of Congress. Until that happens, I think I’ll be O.K.”
