Sybilla Gross

5.40am

Hit snooze.  

5.45am

Hit the snooze button again.  

6.00am

I finally roll out of bed, throw on some gym clothes and march out the front door to get to my gym class. (That, or I just hit the snooze button one more time and give up on the gym…) I take the opportunity to check my Bloomberg emails – my unread messages have proliferated overnight! But that’s News for you. 

6.20am

Time to get annihilated in my gym class! Luckily it’s just across the road from the office, otherwise I’d never go.

7.55am

So now I’m showered, energized and ready to start my morning – with coffee and breakfast of course. The Bloomberg pantry is better than Mum’s kitchen, seriously. Hello free avocados!

8.00am

I start every morning by writing a ‘Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day’ newsletter. It involves a sense of news judgement to choose and summarize the five biggest stories that will impact markets in Asia that day. (The best part is coming up with puns.) The newsletter is sent out to a host of Bloomberg subscribers every morning. If you’ve got the Bloomberg app, you’ll get a notification alert there too.

9.00am

I have a quick flick through the local papers to keep abreast of what’s happening around me in Sydney and the rest of Asia Pacific. Are there any stories that I can explore in a more international context? What about the business angle? After all, when you scratch beneath the surface, every story is a business story!

9.30am

Time to take a look at what’s happening in my beat: Asia Consumer. I cover consumer driven business in Asia – what are the big trends in consumption patterns? How are they changing? How are companies adapting to these meet these changing demands? What effect does that have on us, the consumers? What about sustainability practices and the threat of climate change?

10.15am

The TV team just emailed - they liked my story that was published yesterday about the economy and they want me to do a quick screen hit to talk about it on Bloomberg TV. Make up done, mic on - live TV isn't as scary as it looks, I promise!

11.00am

Back at my desk, I come across a tip about Chinese-Australian businesses in Sydney. I sit down with my bureau chief and pitch him the story. He thinks there could be something to it, so I email my team leader in Hong Kong. She agrees, so I head off to Chinatown with my wonderful Mandarin-speaking colleague, Zoe, and my trusty tape-recorder for some good old fashioned reporting!

2.00pm

After returning, I let our bureau chief know what I picked up from my interviews. He thinks there are some interesting themes, but wants to expand the story and globalize it. He suggests I reach out to reporters in our London, New York and Vancouver bureaus to see whether we can coordinate an article together. This is what I love about Bloomberg – I get to work with amazing reporters from all around the world!

3.00pm

Another U.S.-based reporter reached out to me yesterday to ask for some input. She is hoping to get a statement from one of the Australian regulatory bodies for her story and noticed I had written an article on a similar topic a few months ago. I conduct a few quick interviews on the phone and smash out a couple of paragraphs for her story. Bloomberg is all about collaboration!

4.00pm

I’ve been reading, writing, researching and chasing business leads for my business story all afternoon. Getting past the PR agents can be such a challenge in this job; I feel like I’ve made 10 phone calls in under an hour! But I really need some hard numbers for my story, so I ask for advice from some very experienced colleagues about how to grow my invaluable source list. Everyone is so willing to help here.

5.30pm

Time to look at what’s on the agenda for tomorrow on the ANZ news board.

6.00pm

I’ve made a great start on my story and developed a rough skeleton draft. There’s more work to be done, but I am ready for home!