Principals Media

Principals Media is the modern ghostwriting firm for business leaders. We create uniquely meaningful digital and traditional content to amplify your authentic voice. We help clients start real conversations
and build relationships with global decision-makers.

Founder

Bloomberg LP

Global Head of News Product

--Oversaw integration of Twitter into Bloomberg
--Founded Bloomberg Brief newsletter business
--Launched First Word summary service
--Oversee content deals with news sources 
--Manage Web scraping of news sites

News Content Manager

Managing Editor Global Fixed Income

Managing Editor- Americas

New York Bureau Chief

Co-Head Europe, Asia

Global Emerging Market Editor

Latin America Editor

Latin America Reporter

I spent 32 years at Bloomberg LP and left in early 2022.

Since then I’ve founded Principals Media, a ghostwriting agency for executives. I am also advising startups, consulting media and financial firms on content strategy and angel investing.

I'm open to mentoring anyone interested in journalism, content strategy or fintech product. Please reach out to me via direct messages on LinkedIn.

I use LinkedIn to write about fintech product innovation, my career at Bloomberg, my views on leadership, and life lessons from my parents. 

I spent three decades working for Bloomberg, half of which was spent in editorial and half in product development. The common thread is deep thinking about how to create and find information. 

Bloomberg was still a startup when I was hired in 1990. I was the fifteenth person in the editorial group and worked the graveyard shift, starting at 4 a.m. Mike Bloomberg sat at a desk across the room. 

My first big assignment was to expand operations in Latin America. I opened 7 offices in the region and ran the group for many years. In the mid-1990s, I was named one of Bloomberg’s first five Managing Editors. I became New York Bureau Chief before the 9/11 attacks and directed that coverage. I was promoted to Managing Editor for the Americas in 2001. 

I was recruited to join the nascent product development group in 2006. I managed web scraping operations and pioneered content deals with media companies including the New York Times and Washington Post. 

In 2012, I integrated Twitter onto the Bloomberg terminal. Later, my team focused on automated news and data analytics. That included working with machine learning and AI engineers to build models for news sentiment, news volumes and other algorithms to surface the highest-quality content. 

I enjoy connecting with people who want to talk or work on projects involving content, search and technology. 

If you want to understand what I did at Bloomberg watch this presentation to the CFA Institute in Chicago: 

https://www.cfachicago.org/webcast/distinguished-speaker-series-ted-merz-cfa/

Or listen to this podcast I did with Howard Lindzon: 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bloombergs-ted-merz-on-financial-journalism-information/id1460734936?i=1000506011130

Or watch this video Google made about how Bloomberg leveraged machine translation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J7YexK6rwY

The View from the Office. 

I met up with Gabi Wals to go for a walk in Central Park. We didn’t stop to eat anything. 

It felt appropriate since we first met a few weeks ago doing a 24-hour charity walk organized by Adriaan Kolff called 24 The Planet.

Gabi works in HR at Lab49, a tech consulting firm that builds applications for Wall Street trading firms. She’s from Holland and moved to New York with her husband a year ago. 

Gabi said she’s been doing walking meetings for years. She started when working for Unilever in Rotterdam and wanted to engineer a way to get out from behind her desk where she found herself staring at a screen all day. 

She tries to get in several walks a week with colleagues, friends and other people she is meeting to network. Since her office is in midtown, most of the walks end up in Central Park which reminds her of being in the countryside. 

The walking meeting seems like something that is getting more and more traction. Steve Jobs was famous for walking around Cupertino with clients and people he wanted to woo to come work for him. 

Gabi said walking helps her clear her head and keeps her curious. She makes it a habit not to stick to a defined route. She said that as long as she gets back within the hour she can wander wherever. 

One benefit is there is always an opportunity for discovery. I showed her a rock outcropping just off the main path which has become a place people congregate to watch the sunset. She had walked by countless times, but never noticed it. 

Gabi said she enjoyed meeting other people who work in HR to share notes because it is important to stay on top of new trends in the field. 

She said a strong HR group can spur growth and innovation. “You can do amazing things but only if the foundation is solid and teams aren’t constantly putting out fires.”

If you like to walk you can connect with Gabi on LinkedIn or DM me for an intro.

Ted Merz, CFA

Founder Principals Media - Modern Storytelling for CEOs / Co-Founder Pricing Culture / Former Global Head of News Product at Bloomberg

Michael Green's Substack about the poverty line in America is the essay people are talking about this week.

Green, a portfolio manager at Simplify Asset Management, argues the poverty rate is dramatically underestimated.

The number we use today was created in 1963, when families spent one-third of their income on food. Economist Mollie Orshansky simply multiplied a minimum food budget by three to define “crisis.” 

In 1963, that worked. Housing was cheap, healthcare modest, childcare largely nonexistent, and one income could support a family.

In 2024, the math has inverted. Food represents just 5–7% of spending, while housing consumes 35–45%, healthcare 15–25%, and childcare 20–40%. 

If you keep Orshansky’s logic but update the inputs, the multiplier isn’t three—it’s sixteen. The true crisis line for a family of four lands at $140,000.

Green argues that means a family earning the “median” $80,000 is not “middle class.” Using Orshansky’s own method, they’re struggling. 

A conservative basic-needs budget today requires $136,500 just to stand still—driven by housing, healthcare, transportation, and childcare.

This mismatch creates what Green calls the “Valley of Death”: families lose benefits faster than wages rise, leaving many earning $100K worse off than those earning $40K.

I just heard the sad news that a former colleague from Bloomberg News, Felix Kessler, passed away.

Felix was a class act. He came to Bloomberg in the early 1990s at the end of an illustrious career covering Europe for the Wall Street Journal. 

Over a long career he taught so much to so many. He will be missed.

My thoughts go out to his family and many friends.

AI is starting to have a big impact on Wall Street quarterly earnings.

I'm not talking about the revenue recorded, I'm referring to how analysts manage the process.

It's hard to overstate how much effort goes into preparing for and reacting to results which are released six weeks after the end of the quarter.

AI was expected to make it easier to manage and in many ways it's working as expected by reducing the drudgery of gathering data.

Andrew Meister a research analyst and founder of startup DoTadda, Inc. told me he can now populate spreadsheets and models in 30 minutes versus 4 hours previously.

He's using ChatGPT, as well as software from Daloopa and his own product which summarizes and analyzes conference call trends.

He's using the extra time to run agents to do deep dives on specific business questions for each company. And the results are incredible.

Andrew said one irony is that earnings season may actually get harder.

While it is now easier for analysts to get the detailed work done fast with AI, there is now ample time and multiple avenues for the same analyst to explore and analyze.  

AI will likely lead to less hours of drudge work, but possibly more time analyzing insights.

My number one follow for AI news is Parth Patel. 

I follow him because he knows AI. And I know that because his Instagram name is ParthknowsAI.

Parth drops a daily video to a cumulative audience of about 160k. The videos make complex topics such as academic papers accessible.

The videos are consistent and informational. He does a great job of covering major events without being too narrow or too superficial.

He's got an upbeat, curious vibe but he can be critical when warranted.

There are two other remarkable takeaways about Parth. 

First, he just started posting videos a few months ago. Second, he isn’t a famous AI researcher like Geoffrey Hinton or Yann LeCun. He didn't go to Harvard, Stanford or MIT. He doesn't work at OpenAI or Google.

He studied at Montclair State, near my  hometown in New Jersey. He works at a medical education company.

But in the modern digital world, talent can trump title and Parth has a terrific ability to digest and explain the arc of the story in a way I don't see elsewhere.

It's a reminder both that storytelling matters and that social media offers an opportunity to anyone to share insights with no barrier to entry.

The job market is pretty terrible right now. One thing you can do is raise your visibility and you can do that by creating content on social media. 

That was a message I shared with Ned Phillips recently on his podcast, The Sell. 

I am an evangelist about the opportunity offered by writing and posting videos online. 

Since Gutenberg, the ability for anyone to share their ideas has been limited by the need for someone else to publish them. Social media has changed that. 

I’m not saying it’s easy or without risk or guaranteed, but sharing your experiences and views with the world allows people to find you and that can lead to jobs you didn’t know existed. 

I believe that in the modern era the ability to get your story out by writing and/or recording video confers a distinct advantage and knowing how to publish an effective social media post or TikTok video will be as critical a skill as knowing PowerPoint or Excel. 

To many people over 50 that will sound ridiculous. If you are under 25 you know this is true because when you apply for jobs you get asked to help manage the social media pages. 

I run an agency helping CEOs communicate with content. The number of S&P 500 CEOs and executives who are engaged in online posting is de minimis. 

There are a few, including Jon Gray at Blackstone, Rich Handler at Jefferies and Chris Kempczinski at McDonald's. But they are rare.  

Most businesspeople don’t post because it’s hard and scary and yes, it could go badly and blow up. But you won’t be ready for the future if you don’t start. 

If you want help or just to learn more about my agency, Principals Media, send me a DM. 

We handle writing and videos aimed at social media and thought leadership. I also do workshops and seminars for larger groups in person and via Zoom.

The View from the Office. 

I caught up with Stephen Robinson, the founder and CEO of Newlight Breadworks, via Zoom after we met a few weeks ago at an event for Anagram Capital.

Stephen is a reminder that you can seize opportunities, and they can change your life. 

In 2020, Stephen was working full-time at Cheddar, selling digital ads and branded content. On the side, he had a hobby he’d enjoyed since growing up in Seattle: baking sourdough.

When the pandemic hit — like many people — he started baking more bread at home. He and his family were sheltering out on Long Island and he started selling some of his bread at farm stands in the Hamptons. 

One day a chef from Topping Rose House, a Jean-Georges restaurant, passed by and asked if he could deliver 100 baguettes for a July 4th event. Up until that point Stephen had never baked more than half a dozen loaves at a time. But he said yes, rented a kitchen, and figured it out. 

He began pitching restaurants and wineries around the Hamptons., writing cold emails and sending Instagram messages. He kept his day job for almost four years, working at night to build out the bakery business. Earlier this year he went all in on bread. 

Since then, Newlight has moved into a 20,000 square foot facility in the Bronx and scaled to serve over 200 clients with nationwide distribution. Top accounts include: Tao Group Hospitality, Two Hands, Westville Restaurant Group, ALIDORO, The Grey Dog, Mohegan Sun and Wish You Were Here Group (Ruby’s Cafe & Dudley’s).

The business is benefitting in part from growing demand among Americans for more sophisticated, artisanal bread that wasn’t available from many of the older, family run bread manufacturers. He explained making sourdough is particularly challenging in the Northeast because of the changing seasons and fluctuations in temperature and humidity. 

Stephen said his efforts to reach out to customers directly has also been a factor in spurring growth. Many have not heard from their supplier in years and appreciated his reaching out. 

Stephen bootstrapped the business with $100K from friends and family and has layered in state grants and nonprofit loans. It was a slow, steady, cash-flow-first build.

Now, he’s expanding outside the Northeast. He has a distributor in Dallas–Fort Worth and a new program with the Two Hands restaurant group in Nashville. 

An operation that began with half a dozen loaves is now several thousand a day and it all started because he was ready to seize an opportunity that appeared one day. 

You can connect or follow Stephen on LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.

Stephen Robinson is a reminder that you can seize opportunities and they can change your life. 

In 2020, Stephen was selling digital ads. When the pandemic hit he started baking bread at home and selling some at a farmers' market. 

One day a chef from a Jean-Georges restaurant passed by and asked if he could deliver 100 baguettes for an event. Up until that point Stephen had never baked more than half a dozen loaves at a time. But he said yes. 

Five years later, that one order has become a business, Newlight Breadworks, with a 20,000 square foot facility in the Bronx that serves 200 clients nationwide. 

It’s an incredible story and an example that all of us can just do things.

Open article: Biz journalist Kessler dies at 92 - Talking Biz News by talkingbiznews.com

Biz journalist Kessler dies at 92 - Talking Biz News

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