This Truly Is The Place Where News Happens -- And I Mean Now

The National Press Club is the place where news happens. This year, so is the president's office at the Club.

I am an editor at Bloomberg First Word, the breaking-news desk in Washington. Bloomberg has set up four large computer monitors at the president's office. These screens allow me to physically work at the Club during most of each work day. This has been tremendously valuable for juggling Club and First Word duties!

As a result, the president's office has become a mini news bureau. The monitors allow me to be hard wired to hundreds of Bloomberg reporters and editors around the world. These connections allow me to disseminate the biggest news in the world each day.

In the decade-plus I spent as a reporter for Bloomberg, I ran around town and met newsmakers. My job since 2011 at First Word is to stay at my bank of monitors so reporters and newsmakers can get the information to me -- and then I can quickly get it out to the world through the Bloomberg terminal.

This information comes to me through e-mails from reporters, live chats from colleagues, news feeds, releases, federal filings, webcasts, televised speeches and news conferences, Twitter feeds and more. But no matter how it comes in, it always goes out in a standard way -- fast, short, clearly written, checked, edited, with context, and if possible, with links to the original source.

My four screens at the president's office (and the four I use back at the Bloomberg bureau in Washington) give me 20 different windows of information and data. These include a stock market monitor, e-mail, specialized news feeds, chat boxes with colleagues in Washington and New York, Chicago and Sydney, Internet access, news releases and other federal filings, oil prices, currency data and bond-market changes. We also have a data box that allows us to track who on our team is doing what. My keyboard is able to receive audible commands in case a colleague needs to get my attention. (And when I don't answer right away, they remind me, ``Turn up your keyboard volume!'')

All of these bells and whistles may look nice, but in fact they -- and the approach that accompanies them -- were thoughtfully designed by Bloomberg's Kevin Reynolds, the father of First Word, so that our customers can get the information they need as fast as humanly possible.

Just take a look at news that has come through First Word in the past 30 minutes as I wrote this: the introduction of a bill to overhaul the Export-Import Bank, the proposal of a plan to avoid a government shutdown, two different statements by Janet Yellen at a House hearing, Rep. Maxine Waters' proposal for changes to the Dodd-Frank law, and news on the planned release of a Justice Department Inspector General audit of a corrections contract.

There is rarely a dull day at First Word.

People at the Press Club have come up to take a look at the screens in the president's office. (I apologize, at certain times I have to keep my eyes, and ears, on the screens and can't see you, but come back a little later!) Mostly, the people who visit seem a little overwhelmed by what they see. They wonder if I have attention deficit disorder from being around all this data all day. (I don't think I do. But I have noticed that since I took this job, I pay less attention to the news after hours -- because I have heard it all already!)

It is truly a pleasure, and an honor, to serve members as president of the great and storied National Press Club. It is also a privilege to simultaneously work on First Word for what I consider to be one of the greatest news organizations in the world.

Yes, the National Press Club is the place where news happens -- particularly this year.