Chasing the biggest story of his life

IN A career spanning the dawn of the famous news show 60 Minutes to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, veteran American newsman Andy Lack has made a lifelong friend of hard-to-please Jack Welch, won 16 Emmys and had Apple Inc's Mr Steve Jobs cursing him because he wanted Mr Jobs to pay the music industry more than his offer of US$0.99 (S$1.25) a song for usage rights.

But Mr Lack, 65, a legendary TV news producer who was also chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment in the mid-Noughties, reckoned that his current job as chief of Bloomberg Media Group is his hardest yet.

So why did he return to the news business at a time when it was bleeding from the loss of advertisers and the burgeoning of cheaper-to-run news sites?

"That crisis was exactly why I wanted to come back," he said in an interview at Bloomberg's South-east Asia headquarters here last week, ahead of his talk at the Festival of Media Asia 2013.

"I joined Bloomberg officially on Nov 1, 2008, when the financial crisis was already spiralling. I said this is the biggest story of my lifetime."

Tell him that that is quite a statement, given that he oversaw such breaking news as the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, and he stressed: "The greatest recession since the Great Depression is far and away the most compelling and complicated to report, and what's exciting for me now is to be in the intersection between politics, culture and the economy, in a time when CEOs are rock stars."

Plus, he was quick to add, it was fun to rethink how to present the news while gadgets were changing how everyone behaved.

He is onto such changes like a hawk because his job today is to figure out how to edit, package and present everything that Bloomberg's newsrooms produce on all its media platforms, whether on its legendary computer system, the Bloomberg Terminal, which dispenses financial data, on TV or online.

To do that, the affable man is deploying what he calls a "four-screen strategy", that is, the multifunctional TV screens of today that enable interactions with the Internet, the personal computer screen where many get their news, the pocket or smartphone screen which keeps changing how people communicate and the tablet screen, which he admits he never saw coming and which he considers "the most seductive" because it is the most comfortable to handle so far.

But beyond strategy, he said that close to 40 years in the news business had convinced him that the following elements are crucial if any news organisation is to thrive in future:

Have everyone in it share information freely, within a "no walls, no doors" policy. "We over-communicate with one another at Bloomberg, and the more you get into this rhythm, the more productive your experiences are together."

Be the most credible, transparent and reliable source of news for your customers. "In a world of scattered choices, there has never been more demand for credible sources," he said.

Ensure that your people know their neighbourhood best. "All news is local," he stressed, "and so the more local you get, the more viable the text of your story becomes." He used the word "text" deliberately to stress that it was the main component of all that he sliced and diced for customers' consumption.

Focus on the communities hungriest for news and information today. In Bloomberg's case, his target audience was the global business executive, from CEO to intern, who especially wanted to learn more about technology, sustainability and investing.

Reach out to your customers constantly and ask: "What are you looking for that we are not yet giving you?"

Even with such changes, Mr Lack said his company was still scratching the surface, having decided only in recent years that it should switch from mainly reporting financial news and data to serving the business community everywhere, especially in Asia.

"I look at where Bloomberg is at globally, and we're really at the beginning of connecting all our points where we have started channels and had new partners and deeper insights into the countries we're in. Most of our channels are toddlers. It's early days," he said.

How does Singapore fit into his mission to become the most influential source of news there is?

He said Singapore was very much a nerve centre for his business, particularly for South-east Asian news, and marvelled how the city-state was "a unique environment where you can technically do everything".

He urged Singaporeans to invest more in people who can create enough content that can travel across his four identified screens - as well as anticipate future technologies and the sort of content that it might require.

His group's parent, Bloomberg LP, was co-founded by outgoing New York mayor Michael Bloomberg in 1981 and is still privately run.

Its revenues, which in 2011 were estimated to be around US$7.6 billion, have enabled its aggressive sprees to hire the best people for its newsrooms.

It is able to pay its staff higher than average salaries because of its very profitable Terminal, whose software Bloomberg leases out to more than 310,000 subscribers at a yearly rental rate of about US$20,000.

That has enabled the media company to burgeon to about 2,300 journalists operating in 146 bureaus in 72 countries.

But surely all this go-go-go came at quite a price?

Recent news reports painted the Bloomberg newsroom as a "cage", designed to keep their staff pushing out news.

While he agreed that Bloomberg's work culture was "tough and absolutely demanding", he said squarely: "I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but I haven't encountered what you are describing. We don't have much burnout or churn."

Chuckling, he then admitted that he now slept less than before, thanks to the dawn-to- dusk-to-dawn global news grind that demanded he work all day, every day.

What keeps him going at that unflagging pace?

"I'm not a cock-eyed optimist," he said, "but when you can share much more information much quicker around the world, that is something that all in the world will benefit from."

The father of three then mused: "Sure, younger people are not reading news deeply these days or reading credible sources, but that will take a short time to get sorted.

"That's why news will thrive, and the dynamism of the times we live in makes being in the news business the greatest career you can choose."

suk@sph.com.sg

Andy Lack on...

How news organisations can continue to thrive

"By being a stabilising, useful and reliable anchor in a turbulent period."

Journalists

"We're firemen. The lights never go out in our operations and we're always ready to go on air."

How hard it is for him to anticipate what customers want

"I can't begin a conversation where you don't get to the mobile phone by the second sentence; people keep asking me what apps Bloomberg has and how many. Yet hither and yon, even apps will be reinvented."