Elizabeth Rembert, news reporter, Bloomberg

Joe Weber Author

09/27/2020 Added

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[00:00:00.150]I'm here with Elizabeth Rembert
[00:00:02.320]who is a distinguished graduate of our program.
[00:00:06.880]One of the best students we've had
[00:00:09.420]who was quite active in the DN
[00:00:10.970]and other places while she was at UNL.
[00:00:14.480]Elizabeth, tell us a little bit about your job at Bloomberg.
[00:00:17.140]How long have you been doing it and what do you cover there?
[00:00:20.150]Sure, so I started with Bloomberg June, 2019,
[00:00:23.420]and that's when I came in through the internship program
[00:00:26.600]where I covered finance,
[00:00:27.750]which is just everything about the big banks,
[00:00:31.030]like Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs,
[00:00:34.788]and from there, I was hired into the rotation program,
[00:00:37.648]which I just recently exited.
[00:00:39.390]And so for the rotator program for about a year,
[00:00:42.450]for the way that it was set up when I went through,
[00:00:44.890]for about a year,
[00:00:45.723]you're bouncing around to four different teams,
[00:00:47.910]spending three months on each team,
[00:00:49.760]and so my first rotation was on the Credit Team
[00:00:52.600]where I was covering corporate debt
[00:00:54.760]and how companies use that to finance
[00:00:56.910]and then the market of investment bonds,
[00:00:59.280]how the prices are moving each day,
[00:01:00.850]watching those kinds of movements.
[00:01:03.200]Then I went on to the Breaking News Team,
[00:01:05.000]and then finally I finished up with Agriculture
[00:01:08.250]where I was mostly covering grains markets
[00:01:10.490]and doing some more longer feature stories
[00:01:13.760]about how coronavirus has impacted food
[00:01:17.210]and especially food supply chains.
[00:01:19.350]And now I'm back on Breaking News as my full-time placement,
[00:01:22.100]which is, the way that Breaking News,
[00:01:24.040]the way that people at Bloomberg describe Breaking News is
[00:01:26.380]that we're trying to own the first 15 minutes
[00:01:29.640]of when a story breaks.
[00:01:31.590]And we have Breaking News split up
[00:01:33.870]into two different workflows.
[00:01:35.180]And so one of them is the wire's workflow,
[00:01:37.970]and that's where we're watching for SEC filings,
[00:01:40.860]for press releases, for like web scrapes,
[00:01:44.830]and we're looking for news like mergers and acquisitions,
[00:01:48.030]management, all of that kind of stuff,
[00:01:50.110]new CEOs, CFOs, IPOs, all of that kind of thing.
[00:01:54.870]And then on the social side,
[00:01:56.060]we're just watching Twitter all day,
[00:01:58.510]and those stories are a little bit more abstract.
[00:02:02.130]They're less, like on the wire side,
[00:02:03.780]we're really looking for what do investors need to know
[00:02:07.030]in order to make their trades, what's gonna move the market,
[00:02:10.050]but on the social side, we're also thinking about that,
[00:02:11.930]so like if Elon Musk, in all of his craziness,
[00:02:14.780]tweets something about Tesla,
[00:02:16.080]we'll always headline anything that Elon Musk tweets,
[00:02:19.520]because, you know, everyone's very interested in that.
[00:02:21.607]But we're also looking for things
[00:02:23.060]that our general audience might be interested in,
[00:02:25.480]so it's a little bit more nuanced than the wires side.
[00:02:28.110]We're thinking about the fact
[00:02:30.100]that most of our clients are in New York,
[00:02:31.680]and so maybe we'll write some New York Yankees stories
[00:02:35.150]that isn't necessarily going to move the markets,
[00:02:38.040]but the client would be interested in.
[00:02:40.730]And so the goal on the Breaking News side is
[00:02:42.970]to be sending out headlines
[00:02:44.810]within seconds of the stories breaking,
[00:02:48.420]and then to be sending maybe like really short stories
[00:02:51.530]that are like 50 to 150 words within minutes.
[00:02:55.150]And we also use a lot of news automation tools,
[00:02:58.780]and so these are things that go into these releases
[00:03:01.350]as far as like, when we're looking at earnings,
[00:03:03.710]it'll look at the earnings per share,
[00:03:05.590]and it'll pull that number out, immediately send a headline,
[00:03:08.550]pull all of the other, like relevant metrics out,
[00:03:11.940]and then put that out into a story, just immediately,
[00:03:14.730]within like a 10th of a second.
[00:03:17.340]And so that's why.
[00:03:18.447]And that's done with artificial intelligence?
[00:03:20.910]It is, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:21.860]So we've made up all of these computer programs
[00:03:24.570]and all of that kind of stuff
[00:03:25.430]that go in and pull that out,
[00:03:26.910]and it kind of just covers the base for us.
[00:03:29.160]Like, you know, when Tesla earnings hit,
[00:03:32.460]when it's really, like a really tense time,
[00:03:34.840]everyone's like thinking about this,
[00:03:36.160]the investors wanna see it immediately,
[00:03:38.090]it just kind of like covers our bases
[00:03:40.030]by getting those immediate metrics out.
[00:03:42.360]It lets us go into the earnings release and say,
[00:03:45.767]"Okay, we already have EPS out, we can relax a little bit."
[00:03:48.840]We can look for, you know,
[00:03:50.445]the $3 million like charges that they incurred
[00:03:53.820]in a lawsuit or something
[00:03:54.960]and really use our own human journalistic skills
[00:03:58.590]to do that
[00:03:59.423]because the robots have covered all of the numbers.
[00:04:02.760]Very interesting,
[00:04:03.593]now you mentioned that you got the job
[00:04:04.770]through an internship.
[00:04:06.224]How did you get that and how does Bloomberg regard interns?
[00:04:11.120]Yeah, so I got it through this class with your help
[00:04:15.450]through the trip that we took to New York.
[00:04:17.590]We visited the Bloomberg office,
[00:04:19.510]and you really encouraged me to apply,
[00:04:22.610]and that really gave me a boost
[00:04:24.400]into getting into the internship program.
[00:04:26.100]And it's about 10 weeks long, and it's basically it's,
[00:04:29.840]I mean, it's really just a 10 week interview process
[00:04:32.860]where your team leader,
[00:04:34.270]they place you on a team that you've never heard of before.
[00:04:36.680]They really try to push you out of your comfort zone,
[00:04:39.530]and so you're uncomfortable,
[00:04:41.670]and your team leader is really looking at how you learn,
[00:04:44.530]at how you accept challenges,
[00:04:47.430]at how you grasp the data and the material,
[00:04:50.020]and how you accept the assignments that they give you.
[00:04:52.700]But then also how you like start,
[00:04:54.944]they're looking at how you start
[00:04:56.760]to put it together in your own mind
[00:04:58.280]and how you start to pitch your own assignments.
[00:05:01.920]And then at the end of the 10 weeks or so,
[00:05:04.990]then you can start going into the interview process
[00:05:07.390]for the rotator program,
[00:05:09.370]but they really, they really value interns.
[00:05:11.730]It's really, like you can, you really,
[00:05:14.510]I really felt like I was a valued member of the team,
[00:05:16.720]and so many people reach out to help,
[00:05:18.640]to ask you like how they can help you,
[00:05:20.350]especially because the people who are on the teams,
[00:05:23.410]they understand that
[00:05:24.243]this is a really complicated subject matter
[00:05:25.940]and that you're probably coming in with no experience.
[00:05:28.300]There's a lot of compassion there,
[00:05:30.200]and there's also a lot of people
[00:05:31.540]who are working at Bloomberg full-time
[00:05:33.220]who came from the internship program as well.
[00:05:35.450]So not only do they understand, you know,
[00:05:37.840]oh yeah, this is a really complicated beat,
[00:05:39.430]but they also literally understand where you were.
[00:05:41.900]So Bloomberg treats its internship program
[00:05:44.680]really as a kind of a screening device
[00:05:46.640]for getting full-time employees,
[00:05:48.990]which is somewhat different than other internship programs.
[00:05:52.010]Yeah, absolutely.
[00:05:52.843]It's definitely a pipeline.
[00:05:54.290]It's a really, it's a really stressful pipeline,
[00:05:56.810]but it is a pretty seamless pipeline
[00:05:58.320]where there are steps to getting,
[00:05:59.530]and I know that that's not the case
[00:06:01.050]at a lot of other agencies, like Reuters, for example,
[00:06:03.870]like our biggest competitor.
[00:06:05.600]They, I've had some of my now colleagues
[00:06:09.370]go through those internship processes,
[00:06:11.520]and at the end they say, "We like,"
[00:06:13.860]like hard line.
[00:06:14.693]"We do not hire from this.
[00:06:15.887]"We want you to go out, in five years come back,
[00:06:19.412]"and we'll talk about a full-time position."
[00:06:22.090]Whereas at Bloomberg,
[00:06:22.923]they're really looking at how they're investing in you,
[00:06:25.250]and how to move forward with you if they're interested.
[00:06:28.230]So Bloomberg really wants to grow its own?
[00:06:31.430]Yeah, definitely.
[00:06:32.760]So, what do you like most about your job now?
[00:06:34.640]You're on the Breaking News desk.
[00:06:35.960]What do you like about it?
[00:06:37.660]I really like the adrenaline.
[00:06:39.560]There's a lot, like I told you, how fast things go.
[00:06:44.250]I'm not naturally a very competitive person,
[00:06:46.400]which is like a mortal sin in journalism, you know,
[00:06:48.710]everyone really is trying to get the scoop.
[00:06:51.070]And so I'm really happy to be in an environment
[00:06:52.940]where competition really matters,
[00:06:55.674]like every week one of the Managing Editors on Breaking News
[00:06:59.170]will send around a note showing
[00:07:01.050]what stories we won on and what stories we lost on
[00:07:03.730]compared to how fast our competition got it out.
[00:07:06.730]And oftentimes,
[00:07:07.760]it's like the wins that we get are five seconds, you know,
[00:07:11.880]so it really, it really, really, time really matters.
[00:07:15.500]So I'm happy to be in an environment
[00:07:16.950]where I'm able to hone those competitive skills.
[00:07:21.420]I also really like it
[00:07:22.290]because I'm working with all areas of news.
[00:07:25.100]I'm not siloed into a beat,
[00:07:27.390]becoming an expert in some kind of,
[00:07:30.074]in some kind of like really specific topic.
[00:07:33.270]I'm happy that within my day I can send headlines
[00:07:37.750]on like FDA drug studies,
[00:07:41.300]mergers and acquisitions, a tech IPO.
[00:07:45.030]The other day,
[00:07:45.863]I wrote a story about how the Wells Fargo CEO
[00:07:47.800]made these comments on like Black limits,
[00:07:50.830]there was limited Black talent to pull from.
[00:07:52.870]So you also get those kinds
[00:07:54.000]of interesting human interest stories,
[00:07:55.590]not just necessarily like all numbers stories,
[00:07:58.260]so I'm really happy
[00:07:59.093]that I can kind of have that perspective
[00:08:03.960]on all of the topics in the newsroom
[00:08:05.340]and also be like establishing relationships
[00:08:07.720]with editors all across the newsroom as well
[00:08:10.050]instead of just getting sunk into one topic.
[00:08:13.600]What do you think of the people you're working with?
[00:08:16.320]I really like them.
[00:08:17.153]That's that was one thing about the rotation program
[00:08:19.730]is going around the newsroom.
[00:08:22.150]There's definitely topics that you see
[00:08:24.010]where you're like no, I'm not comfortable with this at all.
[00:08:25.970]I don't see a future for myself here,
[00:08:28.140]but you really like the team.
[00:08:30.870]Inevitably of all, every team that I was on,
[00:08:33.730]I really loved the people, and same thing on Breaking News,
[00:08:36.880]even though it's a really intense environment
[00:08:39.580]as far as the speed and the tools that you're handling,
[00:08:42.300]but everyone is really encouraging.
[00:08:44.480]And not only are they encouraging
[00:08:46.400]within the Breaking News workflow,
[00:08:48.870]they're also encouraging you
[00:08:50.560]to try and find something else that you're passionate about,
[00:08:53.370]like a topic that you might want to delve deeper into,
[00:08:56.260]Maybe on the Breaking News workflow
[00:08:57.960]you're not getting as much of the journalistic sourcing
[00:09:01.060]all of that kind of,
[00:09:02.480]you're not out on the streets reporting,
[00:09:04.020]but they encourage you to try and find those passions.
[00:09:07.110]And so they're not only encouraging you to do your job well,
[00:09:09.990]but also to try and find ways to enrich yourself
[00:09:13.070]with what you're working on.
[00:09:14.070]And they're fairly smart people?
[00:09:16.200]Oh yeah, yeah definitely.
[00:09:17.830]It's, and it's really interesting,
[00:09:19.020]because at Bloomberg it doesn't feel like,
[00:09:21.920]there's really diverse people as well.
[00:09:24.310]Like there's, you know, demographically diverse,
[00:09:27.440]but then there's also, like my team leader right now,
[00:09:30.016]his background is in mechanical engineering, not journalism,
[00:09:34.870]so he brings like that technical background for these tools.
[00:09:40.140]And so they're really smart,
[00:09:41.840]and they're smart in a lot of different ways.
[00:09:44.480]So business journalism is a niche area
[00:09:46.870]in the field overall, if you know journalism,
[00:09:49.040]so why should students consider going into that
[00:09:52.360]as opposed to some other area in journalism?
[00:09:54.810]Yeah, I think, I mean, money is behind everything,
[00:09:58.790]and that's an easy answer,
[00:10:00.650]so being able to understand the money, the globalization,
[00:10:04.913]the rapidly changing commerce and markets
[00:10:08.790]that are happening right now, that impact all of our lives,
[00:10:11.090]even if we don't, if we're unconscious of it.
[00:10:14.080]I think being able to understand that,
[00:10:15.540]monitor it, investigate it, and then also,
[00:10:19.510]and then be able to report back to, you know,
[00:10:21.670]the people who are making decisions
[00:10:22.990]as far as policy leaders and business leaders
[00:10:26.550]and investment people who are making those decisions.
[00:10:29.940]And then also too, you know,
[00:10:31.180]the stories that end up on bloomberg.com
[00:10:33.670]to people, to the wider audience,
[00:10:35.290]kind of explain how this is affecting their lives.
[00:10:37.773]Like, the supply chain things that I reported on
[00:10:41.120]when I was on the Agriculture Team,
[00:10:42.570]like explaining why meat prices had gone up so much,
[00:10:46.410]explaining all of the machinations behind that,
[00:10:48.260]I think is really interesting.
[00:10:50.010]I think also that business journalism
[00:10:51.880]gives you a lot of opportunity
[00:10:54.240]to excel at the data side of it,
[00:10:56.520]with the numbers, the graphs, you know,
[00:10:59.010]going through the spreadsheets,
[00:11:00.600]but then also you're doing it,
[00:11:02.560]you're still doing the storytelling of it,
[00:11:04.190]of the power, the dynamics between people,
[00:11:07.052]you're getting those charts, but you're also,
[00:11:09.350]people are also really interested in like, you know,
[00:11:12.030]the words that were exchanged through a deal
[00:11:14.920]or the lengths that an entrepreneur has to go through.
[00:11:17.980]So you're still,
[00:11:19.160]you're able to be really analytical
[00:11:20.691]and smart with the numbers,
[00:11:22.090]but you're still able to do
[00:11:23.150]the like reporting on the street,
[00:11:25.040]the hard-nosed kind of like looking for color
[00:11:27.960]kind of thing as well.
[00:11:28.950]Humanizing those numbers in some way, huh.
[00:11:30.840]Right, exactly, yeah.
[00:11:31.944]So many areas in journalism
[00:11:34.100]are having really tough times right now, as you know,
[00:11:36.490]particularly newspapers.
[00:11:38.720]Why is an organization like Bloomberg
[00:11:40.870]a better bet for the future?
[00:11:43.652]Well, I don't want to jinx myself and be like,
[00:11:46.127]"I feel totally secure."
[00:11:48.490]But they did tell us, you know,
[00:11:49.640]early on in the pandemic
[00:11:50.850]that they weren't seeing any pandemic-related layoffs
[00:11:55.190]and that we could feel secure in our job that way.
[00:11:58.490]Bloomberg is unique because Bloomberg News
[00:12:02.200]isn't what's generating profit for the organization.
[00:12:05.880]Its clients are paying $24,000 a year
[00:12:10.470]for access to the terminal,
[00:12:12.500]which is just like basically a computer software system
[00:12:16.670]with all kinds of financial information on it,
[00:12:18.950]of which Bloomberg News, like the stories that we put out,
[00:12:21.820]is a small part of,
[00:12:23.500]so I think that we have a lot of security
[00:12:25.370]in knowing that it is a profitable company,
[00:12:29.150]and that this company isn't looking at us to make money.
[00:12:34.950]Also not depending on advertising, is that correct?
[00:12:37.460]Yeah, yeah, no advertising either.
[00:12:40.554]Except within certain magazine products, but.
[00:12:43.080]Sure.
[00:12:44.430]Yeah, but that's a small part,
[00:12:45.870]it's the terminal that's really the moneymaker.
[00:12:48.900]So that gives me a lot of security
[00:12:50.960]in knowing that it's not the same story
[00:12:54.270]as a lot of the other parts of the journalism industry.
[00:12:58.950]And then I also think that, going back to what I said,
[00:13:01.450]where at Bloomberg you are able to,
[00:13:04.560]and business journalism in general,
[00:13:06.070]you're able to show that you have mastered the data side
[00:13:08.990]and that you've mastered
[00:13:10.040]the storytelling side in your stories.
[00:13:11.860]I think that just gives you a lot of like resume,
[00:13:15.650]that's a really good resume booster,
[00:13:17.030]and it is just an indication
[00:13:19.350]of what kind of skilled journalist you are.
[00:13:22.140]And Bloomberg is also global,
[00:13:23.750]so somebody like you, who speaks Arabic,
[00:13:26.760]can look toward a career
[00:13:28.940]that might involve foreign correspondence, is that correct?
[00:13:31.720]Yeah, yeah,
[00:13:32.553]and that was another thing
[00:13:33.610]that really, really drew me to Bloomberg is
[00:13:35.330]that it's incredibly seamless
[00:13:38.470]to try and get a job in another bureau.
[00:13:41.270]I mean, obviously there's all of the, you know,
[00:13:43.350]life complications of moving to a different country,
[00:13:45.580]but as far as jobs being open
[00:13:47.550]and them being accepting of you,
[00:13:49.333]it's a really great company if you wanna work abroad.
[00:13:52.730]It's truly a global operation,
[00:13:54.310]and it has scores and scores of bureaus around the world.
[00:13:58.060]Have you dealt with Corporate PR
[00:13:59.900]and Investor Relations folks?
[00:14:01.580]And if so, what do you find most helpful,
[00:14:04.100]and what do you find least helpful about them?
[00:14:07.000]I have, and I've gone through some trainings with,
[00:14:08.870]you know, senior reporters at Bloomberg,
[00:14:10.820]who can speak on this better than me, and they've told,
[00:14:13.100]they've told us, like the big line is,
[00:14:14.480]that they're not your friends,
[00:14:15.820]but they're also not your enemy.
[00:14:18.210]And that there's ways you can work together.
[00:14:21.600]So I found it helpful when,
[00:14:23.040]they do send you a lot of email pitches just constantly,
[00:14:27.570]and sometimes they will be offering you access to a source
[00:14:31.980]that you have been wanting to.
[00:14:34.500]So maybe on Agriculture,
[00:14:36.690]one of the reporters I was working with,
[00:14:38.440]she got a pitch to talk to the Kellogg's CEO
[00:14:41.570]from a PR person, and so she took him up on the,
[00:14:44.140]she took them up on the pitch,
[00:14:46.290]and she got this interview,
[00:14:47.600]and she didn't necessarily write anything
[00:14:49.470]from that interview, but she did make that connection.
[00:14:52.550]And she was able to eventually cut out the PR person from it
[00:14:57.720]in order to have direct access to the CEO
[00:15:00.670]because they had made that relationship.
[00:15:02.280]She had gotten their contact information,
[00:15:04.670]so they can be really helpful in providing that first step
[00:15:06.790]to getting to a source.
[00:15:08.830]They can also be helpful when you do,
[00:15:10.810]when you introduce yourself, if you are new on a beat,
[00:15:13.950]and you wanna brainstorm ideas, they're just, it's about,
[00:15:17.960]you know, building that relationship,
[00:15:19.540]just as much as with a source.
[00:15:21.140]But it can,
[00:15:22.070]they are unhelpful when you might email a source directly
[00:15:25.850]and then they send it over to a PR person,
[00:15:28.110]and you get a PR email back to you,
[00:15:29.890]and you're like, "Agh, why did you do that?"
[00:15:32.030]'cause then you have to go through the rigamarole,
[00:15:34.170]and they might sit on an interview with you,
[00:15:36.350]which is discouraging 'cause they might cut off questions.
[00:15:40.880]So I think you just have to be clear
[00:15:41.980]about what you're trying to do
[00:15:43.650]and what they're trying to do.
[00:15:45.110]But sometimes, you know,
[00:15:46.290]if there's been times
[00:15:47.670]when I've been trying to report out a story,
[00:15:50.020]and a PR person will say,
[00:15:51.827]"No, they're not going to talk to you about this."
[00:15:53.920]Or like,
[00:15:54.753]"They're not going
[00:15:55.586]to offer you more information about this."
[00:15:57.430]And it's really frustrating
[00:15:58.730]that they're completely denying your answers for that,
[00:16:01.650]but it can also be encouraging in that you're like,
[00:16:04.417]"Okay, now I'm really onto something
[00:16:06.027]"because they are being a little bit
[00:16:07.957]"more guarded about this."
[00:16:09.600]So inadvertently they can be helpful at times.
[00:16:12.280]Yeah, definitely.
[00:16:13.113]But I think that you,
[00:16:13.946]I think that there is a little bit
[00:16:15.240]of trying to get around them for sure.
[00:16:19.000]Finally, do you have any advice for students?
[00:16:21.460]Yeah, I would say it's really easy to be,
[00:16:25.030]I mean, I was intimidated to work at Bloomberg,
[00:16:27.560]and my first day of the internship I felt really lost.
[00:16:31.565]But try not to be intimidated, because really at its heart,
[00:16:36.080]what they're looking for, and what they want you to be,
[00:16:37.930]is a good journalist.
[00:16:39.140]And that just comes down
[00:16:40.109]to everything that I learned at UNL as far as being curious,
[00:16:44.650]like asking the questions that I'm interested in naturally,
[00:16:50.900]just doing a good job of reporting and being determined.
[00:16:54.740]So first I would say, just try to be a good journalist,
[00:16:57.610]and in order to do that I feel like the way
[00:16:59.510]that I tried to be a good journalist in college
[00:17:02.330]was just writing a lot, and writing for the Daily Nebraskan,
[00:17:06.170]and trying to do the best I could in my reporting classes,
[00:17:09.210]just taking stories seriously.
[00:17:12.280]Another thing I would say is to not,
[00:17:15.010]another way that I felt intimidated in these circles
[00:17:18.450]is because it's really filled with people
[00:17:22.580]who are from the East Coast,
[00:17:23.670]have gone to impressive schools, and know each other.
[00:17:26.130]It's a very tight circle, like community,
[00:17:29.750]but they're really interested in diversity of perspectives,
[00:17:32.600]not necessarily just meaning, you know,
[00:17:34.830]demographic or like race and gender and that kind of stuff.
[00:17:38.220]They're also really interested to hear
[00:17:39.960]what someone from Nebraska who grew up on a farm has to say,
[00:17:44.490]so that's been,
[00:17:45.323]that's been definitely a strength for me
[00:17:47.550]in my year at the company.
[00:17:50.000]And then my,
[00:17:51.000]and then I think my biggest piece of advice is
[00:17:52.580]just be absolutely willing to try anything,
[00:17:56.235]and this is my actual biggest piece of advice,
[00:18:00.130]just learn how to take
[00:18:01.600]like criticism and constructive feedback.
[00:18:04.390]Just let it like roll off your shoulders,
[00:18:07.080]don't take it personally, and learn how to grow from it,
[00:18:10.030]because that's what you need to do,
[00:18:11.960]especially at a place like Bloomberg,
[00:18:13.520]where you're just learning constantly.
[00:18:16.030]This was very helpful.
[00:18:17.560]Elizabeth Rembert, an emerging star now at Bloomberg News.

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Elizabeth Rembert, news reporter, Bloomberg

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