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Comment by Fuxy | Hacker News Reader

Aren't they just ignoring the important things in order to remain in China.

If they're not going to report on meaningful things what is the purpose of them still being there then?

I suspect it's money but that just confirms my suspicion of them not being real journalists.

Yes, Bloomberg the news outlet has no purpose there if they can't report on what's going on. However, Bloomberg the terminal subscription seller (e.g. nearly all the revenue that Bloomberg makes) can remain in China and continue to make money. The market is too large to ignore, at least for Bloomberg.

Isn't one reason that people subscribe to the terminals that they get unfiltered access to the Bloomberg news feed? I know that market data is the primary benefit, but isn't timely access to potentially market-moving news stories a significant secondary benefit? If they start pulling punches in cases like this, how much can you trust the accuracy and completeness of news being delivered over the terminals?

no, the terminal and the news are unrelated. the main reason to subscribe to the terminal are messaging and data.

Indeed -- the news organization is a loss leader to sell terminals.

I believe that as a few years ago, Bloomberg had zero terminals in china. I may be wrong, and thing may have changed, but I don't think that china is a big source of revenue for Bloomberg. Of course, I'm not saying that it is not a big potential source of revenue.

According to the NY Times they have terminals in China:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/18/world/asia/reporter-on-unp...

> Bloomberg L.P., the parent company of Bloomberg News, receives much of its revenue from selling subscriptions for its financial-information terminals. After Bloomberg News published an article in June 2012 on the family wealth of Xi Jinping, at that time the incoming Communist Party chief, sales of Bloomberg terminals in China slowed, as officials ordered state enterprises not to subscribe. Officials also blocked Bloomberg’s website on Chinese servers, and the company has been unable to get residency visas for new journalists.

If they're not going to report on meaningful things what is the purpose of them still being there then?

If you mean in terms of investigative journalism, probably not much purpose. But if you mean in terms of profits, they could run an inoffensive newswire that just reports on business news without digging too deep into sensitive subjects like corruption.

They need to stay there to collect intelligence.

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