Deep Read: 'Vanity Fair' on the New Bloomberg

Seth Mnookin's Vanity Fair story on the changing face of Bloomberg News, teased in the Post today, is online now. Much of it's familiar to anyone who's been following the developments at the company since former Time Inc. editor in chief Norman Pearlstine arrived there last June: a relaxing of stylistic strictures and onerous workplace demands; the gradual marginalization of editor in chief Matthew Winkler; the steady undoing of the "Bloomberg Way," Winkler's corporate gospel.

But there's some good stuff worth relaying:

-The personal dynamics of the Winkler-Pearlstine relationship are beyond opaque. Though it's obvious that Pearlstine represents the end of Winkler's influence at the news service he created, Winkler sounds genuinely happy -- giddy, even -- to have Pearlstine, his former boss at The Wall Street Journal, back in his life. Working with Pearlstine, he said,

feels great. It always felt great; it feels even better now. It feels better because I know so much more than I did then, and, actually, I can appreciate a lot of the things instinctively that, perhaps, he was trying to do. Even if everything was exactly like it was then, only carried forward, you know, 30 years, I'd still think it would be terrific I was just one of those guys happily toiling on his behalf. It was a thrill. And I'd do it again if I was asked to.

Yet here's what Pearlstine says about the day that Winkler left the Journal to join Bloomberg: "I thought it was a sustainable hit for the Journal, frankly."

-"One of the country's metro dailies is looking into outsourcing all of its health reporting to Bloomberg News as a way of meeting corporate-mandated budget cuts without decreasing its coverage areas."

-I don't know about you, but I didn't realize just how fast Bloomberg has been growing. In 2000, the newsroom comprised 1,200 people; now it's up to 2,300, bigger than the newsrooms of The New York Times and the Washington Post combined.

-Mnookin on Bloomberg's premature obituary of Steve Jobs, its role in re-disseminating an old story about United Airlines and its erroneous reporting of a Sarah Palin DUI: "It's possible that all of those mistakes would have occurred if Winkler were still Bloomberg News's all-powerful majordomo. But there's no way some heads wouldn't have rolled."

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