Bloomberg hires Halperin, Heilemann for new politics site

ORG XMIT: NYEA122 Actress Sarah Paulson poses with HBO Films president Len Amato, left and co-author Mark Halperin at the premiere of HBO Films' "Game Change" at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Wednesday, March 7, 2012 in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini)(Photo: Evan Agostini AP)

Bloomberg L.P., the financial news and data company, said Sunday it has hired veteran Washington journalists, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, to create and oversee a political news and analysis website, the first major initiative in the company's efforts to boost its consumer media business.

Their site, Bloomberg Politics, will run stories, commentary, polling and data analytics produced by a team of journalists in Washington, D.C. and New York and be the model for other consumer news properties the company will create in the coming months.

Halperin and Heilemann, who co-authored Game Change, a best-seller chronicling the 2008 presidential election, and Double Down, a sequel about the 2012 election, will host a daily television show on Bloomberg's cable network. They also will lead political coverage across other Bloomberg platforms, including mobile, video, magazines, radio and events.

In March, Justin Smith, who heads Bloomberg Media Group, a company division that includes television, radio, magazine, conferences and digital properties, announced plans to grow by seeking an audience beyond the finance industry. A key component of the strategy is to create better distribution plans -- new digital media brands, more video and radio stations, and aggressive international licensing of magazines -- for a vast amount of stories and content produced by its 2,400 journalists.

While Bloomberg Politics is the first site to be announced under the new initiative, the subsequent sites that are in development will focus on the global business market, the company said.

"We have a new, aggressive vision for what our media products can be going forward and Bloomberg Politics is the model for how we will be re-architecting our approach to consumer media," Smith said in a statement.

Until he joined Bloomberg, Halperin worked as editor-at-large and senior political analyst for TIME, covering politics. Heilemann served as national affairs editor for New York magazine and a political analyst for MSNBC.

The announcement for the new political site comes just a week after Bloomberg reorganized its Washington coverage team. Bloomberg named Winnie O'Kelley, who joined the company from The New York Times last year, as executive editor for all U.S. government, legal and regulatory stories.

Craig Gordon, who worked as the managing editor at Politico before joining Bloomberg, was promoted as managing editor for Washington news. Jonathan Allen, who left his job as Politico's White House bureau chief in January, was named Washington bureau chief.