Bloomberg-ACJ in pact for financial journalism programme

Bloomberg News and Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) have launched a co-branded financial journalism programme in India. The ACJ-Bloomberg Postgraduate Program will teach students the latest journalism skills related to writing and editing, digital and multimedia reporting, ethics, investigative reporting, fundamentals of finance and government reporting, says a press release.  The applications to the course, which starts in July, opened on Tuesday. 

“There is no business and financial reporting programme in India and it is a data driven field. So, there was an opportunity for us to do something,” says Parry Ravindranathan, managing director, international, Bloomberg Media Group. Bloomberg is one of the world’s leading business and financial information firms with analysts in 120 countries and over 2,600 journalists across the world. Its terminals are a lifeline for more than 325,000 companies and financial institutions that rely on it for information, analysis and accurate data. The terminals bring in more than 80 per cent of  the privately-listed Bloomberg’s revenues.  Ravindranathan is an ACJ graduate which made the choice simpler for him. 

Bloomberg has been deeply involved in putting together the curriculum.  

Plus, there are twelve Bloomberg terminals available for the students to work on. 

The timing of the course says Arijit Ghosh, managing editor, Bloomberg News, couldn’t be better given that there is a lot of inaccurate news around. 

“The Bloomberg terminals are a luxury for the students. Bloomberg will bring in experts for students, Mint is delivering some modules. The Hindu Business Line and several other papers are supporting the programme,” says Sashi Kumar, chairman, ACJ.  He reckons that unlike its current plain vanilla journalism course, the ACJ-Bloomberg one has the potential to attract mid-career journalists who may want to shift to financial writing. 

The programme is not intended to be a revenue stream for Bloomberg. It is part of the journalism training initiatives it takes in Africa and China.  Though it does collaborate with some of the best journalism schools across the world, “We are not in the business of education. It was just an interesting proposition for us because trained talent is a huge challenge across Asia,” says Ravindranathan.