• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, May 13, 2008

Bloomberg L.P. has named Norman Pearlstine its Chief Content Officer--a new role for the company--where he will be in charge of finding growth opportunities for Bloomberg's multi-platform content, including television, radio, magazine and online news products. In this capacity, Pearlstine will work closely with Editor in Chief Matthew Winkler, also the founder of Bloomberg News. The two have worked together before, beginning in the 1980s at The Wall Street Journal.

After several decades with The Wall Street Journal, Pearlstine served as editor in chief of Time Inc. for over a decade, overseeing the editorial content of scores of magazines, including Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, People, and Time. Most recently, Pearlstine was a senior advisor for telecom and media at The Carlyle Group.

Pearlstine's appointment comes as Bloomberg faces intensified competition from longtime rivals that recently merged or were acquired. In April, the Canada-based Thomson Corporation completed its acquisition of Reuters, edging out Bloomberg as the largest business news and information service in the world. The new combined entity provides about 34% of the world's financial data, versus 33% for Bloomberg.

To a lesser degree, Bloomberg is also threatened by News Corp.'s acquisition of Dow Jones, including its flagship paper, The Wall Street Journal. News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch has said he plans to use business content from his flagship newspaper in his new Fox Business News channel, and hinted at other synergies between the company and his substantial media portfolio.

Dow Jones owns several business news services, including Dow Jones Newswires, Factiva, Dow Jones Indexes, and Dow Jones Financial Information Services.