Welcome to Texas ProRot, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

I'm Dan Pramak. On today's show, the Senate gets its own cryptocurrency expert, and a 78-year-old poet makes business history in Michigan.

But first, Bloomberg's media mess.

So shortly after Michael Bloomberg officially threw his hat into the 2020 presidential ring,

the news organization bearing his name announced that it wouldn't cover his candidacy.

And then it went a giant step further, saying it also wouldn't cover any of his Democratic rivals.

Now, to a certain extent, this was just the extension of a longstanding Bloomberg news policy

against covering both its namesake, his businesses, his philanthropy, and his time as mayor of

New York. The basic thinking was that any positive coverage would be viewed by readers as

self-serving, and any critical coverage might be viewed by readers as self-serving,

and any critical coverage might be viewed as not critical enough.

But this rock and hard place argument hasn't gone over too well with the public, and in particular

the MAGA public, who sees it as fundamentally unfair to President Trump, who Bloomberg

News does plan to keep covering, at least for now.

And to hammer home that point, the Trump campaign has pledged not to credential any Bloomberg

news reporters at its events.

The bottom line here is that this policy undercuts Mike Bloomberg's main electoral argument,

that he's a highly competent manager.

He could have preempted all of this,

maybe separating Bloomberg news from his broader financial services company and, say,

leaving a contractual partnership between them, all before jumping into the race. But he didn't

do that. And the result is controversy for both his campaign and for his employees. In 15 seconds,

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