I have a high tolerance for entrepreneurial ego. I find even Donald Trump amusing in small doses. So how could Michael Bloomberg's fabled arrogance fail to entertain? In short, I expected to love Bloomberg by Bloomberg, the autobiography of the man who built the financial information service that bears his name--a service that I think is the most useful newsroom tool since the telephone. Instead, I read the book with a growing sense of hilarious dismay.

The hilarity arises because Michael Bloomberg, in a figurative sense, is a fellow who has never written a correction. Most real journalists have made a few mistakes; maybe correcting them in public keeps us human as we cover the mistakes of others. Bloomberg has missed that humbling experience because, by his account, he's never made any errors.

He was forced out of Salomon Brothers, where he built an early version of his service, because a rival had it in for him, not because he lacked diplomacy. The fledgling Bloomberg news service was slow to get the credentials that its reporters needed to attend Federal Reserve and other official briefings in Washington and Tokyo because, we are told, the journalists on the committees that granted these essential press passes were stupid, jealous jerks, not because the company was combative and arrogant. While other media bosses at least profess to fret about the damage our craft inflicts on our families and our bodies, Bloomberg boasts of his staff's twelve hour work days-and brags that he sent carpenters into his newsroom one weekend to cut eighteen inches off the tiny desks so he could shoehorn a few extra people into the trenches.

Like many of his counterparts, this self-proclaimed media mogul displays little but contempt for journalists. "Ignorance and arrogance are a deadly combination," he asserts. "They run riot in the profession of journalism." Elsewhere he notes, "Poll after poll shows that most people rank elected and appointed officials at the bottom of the 'most respected' list--right down with us journalists (where maybe I can understand the general contempt)."

But don't take it personally, folks. We're in good company. The world is full of people whom Bloomberg holds in contempt. "Typical company politics elsewhere stifle most free-thinking employees and discourage risk taking," he fumes. "The accounting oversight in most corporations prevents trying in a year the diverse creativity we institute in a month." Unlike Donald Trump, who seems to understand that praising his rivals only sweetens his victory over them, Bloomberg perversely boasts of winning the race against a field of fools, knaves, and sluggards. Where is the honor in that?

So why should you bother wading through this hyperthyroidal sales pitch at all, when you might be improving your mind with, say, the latest Dilbert volume? Because you ignore Bloomberg at your peril: he intends to redefine our profession if he can.

Today, he controls a global news wire, all-news radio stations, cable television programs, financial magazines, and even a book publisher. But his core business is renting out "Bloombergs," as he modestly calls the box-like computer terminals that deliver global market information to his corporate customers. His rivals in this business are market-leading Reuters and second-place Telerate, the Dow Jones subsidiary, and their boxes come with well-respected news services attached. So Bloomberg needed a news service to keep his box competitive. (Imagine that the Sulzberger family is in the paper-milling business and just ginned up The New York Times as a way to sell more newsprint, and you have the general idea here.)

In early 1990, Bloomberg recruited reporter Matthew Winkler from The Wall Street Journal to build a news service for him. A year or so earlier, Winkler had co-written an article that portrayed Bloomberg's service as far superior to Telerate, and to Bloomberg's amazement, the Journal had printed it on page one although it was unflattering to another Dow Jones subsidiary. Before signing on, Winkler tested his future boss by asking if he would print an unflattering story about a major customer if the customer threatened to toss out his Bloomberg boxes in retaliation. Bloomberg said yes, as any selfrespecting egotist would. Alas, Winkler did not ask the obvious litmus-test question: "Would you do what Dow Jones did--print a newsworthy but flattering story about a competitor who threatened your business?"

This book suggests the answer. Clearly, Michael Bloomberg didn't get into journalism to defend the First Amendment or to keep a watchful eye on the powerful or even to schmooze with stars; he came to make a buck by putting a Bloomberg box within reach of everyone in the world. The journalism business was simply one way to achieve that end.

Don't take my word for it. Here's how he gave Winkler his marching orders:

I handed him a three-page list of what Bloomberg Business News...should be doing. Our purpose was to do more than just collect and relay news; it should also, ethically, advertise the analytical and computational powers of the Bloomberg terminal by highlighting its capabilities in each news story. This would make each story better and, at the same time, make it easier to rent more terminals.

And now that he's here in the news business, Bloomberg is emulating other corporate-minded press potentates by transposing journalism into a key he can sing. He studied music on Wall Street, where the one paying the piper always calls the tune. It is here that my hilarity gave way to dismay. To show you why, I'm going to quote Bloomberg at some length, so buckle your seat-belts:

In our company, everybody's in one room and works together. The environment we've created at Bloomberg means we don't do anything independently of one another. We have been more successful in news because of that. Our reporters periodically go before our sales force and justify their journalistic coverage to the people getting feedback from the news story readers. Are the reporters writing stories that customers need or want?...In turn, the reporters get the opportunity to press the salespeople to provide more access, get news stories better distribution and credibility, bring in more business people, politicians, sports figures, and entertainers to be interviewed. Most news organizations never connect reporters and commerce. At Bloomberg, they're as close to seamless as it can get.

Bloomberg insists that his news people can call it as they see it. But, our mentor continues, "In today's world, the economics of publishing won't permit paying journalists to write what no one wants to read. I'm proud of the balance we maintain between the dollar sign and the written word."

Now, I can recall times when writers pursued stories that nobody really wanted to read--all that unpatriotic stuff from Vietnam, those overblown pieces on that two-bit burglary at the Watergate complex. How foolish we've been! The folks in advertising sales probably could have straightened us out years ago, if we'd just shared office space with them.

Bloomberg says he wrote this amateurish prose himself, but he acknowledges "invaluable help" from Matt Winkler, a veteran of the pro circuit who certainly should be held to its standards. And the book is dedicated to both men's offspring as "our attempt to answer the question 'What does Daddy do?' "

That's not the question uppermost in my mind, guys. I want to know if either of you understands that journalism, when practiced as the Founding Fathers suggested, is not merely a commercial venture. And I want to know what you will do on the inevitable day when good journalism is not good business. An independent biography might answer these questions. This sloppy and unreliable book does not.

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