Simon Dumenco of Ad Age deconstructs the Bloomberg snooping scandal and what it means.

Dumenco writes, “Bloomberg News’ admitted misuse of its power is worth deconstructing here, in Advertising Age specifically, because we’re one of the more than 440 publications worldwide that license Bloomberg journalism. (Adage.com occasionally runs Bloomberg stories.)

“For those of us who sit outside the Bloomberg bubble, it’s easy to understand how some of its reporters felt entitled to snoop. The company, from the top down, is ego-driven — it was founded, of course, by the current mayor of New York City — and because of the absurd economics of the Bloomberg terminals, which rent for roughly $20,000 a year per subscriber, the Bloomberg empire is awash in cash that almost defies comprehension. Bloomberg LP is 88%-owned by Mike Bloomberg, which has made him the seventh-richest person in America, with an estimated net worth of $27 billion.

“Bloomberg’s monument to himself, glittering Bloomberg Tower in midtown Manhattan, has a sprawling newsroom that architecture critic Paul Goldberger once called ‘one of the most exhilarating workspaces I’ve ever seen.’ Given that vibe, it’s also a monument to that lost post-Watergate, pre-internet golden era of journalism when a lot of journalists actually felt powerful, not embattled.

“In fact, Bloomberg newsrooms are among the last remaining precincts in which journalists don’t constantly feel like members of an endangered species. Enabled by the Bloomberg-terminal lotto money, Bloomberg News functions within a sort of reality-distortion field that shields it from the harsh economic realities other media companies face these days.

“Bloomberg, the man, tends to get what he wants (he spent $108 million on his self-financed campaign to win a third term as mayor); likewise, Bloomberg, the media empire, tends to get what it wants. Though Bloomberg has had some layoffs here and there — notably in early 2009 at Bloomberg Radio and TV — it’s never really been hesitant to spend big. (One journalist I know took a job there after Bloomberg made him the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse: a more than $50,000 raise to jump ship from a competitor.) ”

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Neil Irwin of The Washington Post writes about how the recent Bloomberg snooping scandal illustrates what drives today’s business journalism.

Irwin writes, “The interface, while not particularly hard to learn, is not intuitive, so people who are used to it tend to want to stick with it. It is not uncommon for hedge fund types switching jobs to have in their contracts that they will have a Bloomberg terminal at their new job. And the terminals have email and chat services that only subscribers can use, and which many Wall Street types use to trade gossip and tips with each other.

“You can’t think about Bloomberg News without understanding that this is the ecosystem in which it exists. The journalists there also create some excellent work on topics that have nothing to do with financial markets, but their bread and butter, their raison d’etre is to be one more thing that makes the Bloomberg terminal something that financial professionals can’t afford not to have.

“For Bloomberg, in other words, the terminal business is so lucrative and so important, that it can spare no expense to make sure that if a plane crashes in Mozambique or Hungary appoints a new central banker or, say, a senior executive of a major investment bank has been forced out of his job, the news will pop up on a Bloomberg terminal first.

“Which brings us back to the events of the last few days. The practice of letting journalists access information about when subscribers had logged in and what broad categories of data they accessed pits the two imperatives of Bloomberg’s strategy against each other. On the one hand, it wants to do everything it can to ensure that its reporters are drumming up information that the competition isn’t. On the other, anything that discomfits the subscribers who are paying the bills could endanger the whole enterprise.”

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CNBC senior economics correspondent Steve Liesman writes Friday about the remaining unanswered questions surrounding the Bloomberg snooping scandal.

Here are some of them:

If editors knew about the issue in 2011, why was the practice only banned in 2013 after Goldman Sachs complained?

The appearance, according to Roush, is that clients are calling the shots on journalistic ethics at Bloomberg. “That causes me to worry what’s going to happen the next time a large client of Bloomberg comes to the company and says ‘We don’t like what you’re doing,’ ” Roush said.

What changes have really been made?

Doctoroff said the company has created a new position of client data compliance officer, “who is responsible for centralizing our data security efforts.” He also said the company now prohibits access to the private information for “reporters.” But the company has said nothing about editors and news executives, such as Winkler, who could potentially tell reporters what they have gleaned from the information.

Where’s Bloomberg’s coverage of the breach?

Roush points out that the New York Times was able to put the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal behind it a decade ago because it wrote the definitive story on the incident. Roush and others say Bloomberg’s coverage has been non-existent. There appears to be a company policy that it does not write about itself. That policy conflicts with its otherwise blanket coverage of central banks, many of which have made public statements about the breach. The company has declined requests from CNBC to interview its executives.

Read more here.