Washington Post, Bloomberg will start news service

The Washington Post and Bloomberg will start a service in January to distribute a selection of their news to newspapers, Websites and other subscribers, a day after the Post ended a similar arrangement with Tribune Co's Los Angeles Times. The service, "The Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News," also will produce a business page on the Post's website that includes news from the Post and Bloomberg's website. The news service, which begins on Jan. 1, 2010, will feature 120 stories a day, along with photos, graphics and other story elements. The decision to start the news service comes as Bloomberg may be trying to broaden its reach beyond its base of financial clients who read its news on Bloomberg terminals. In a sign of this, the company is the likely front-runner to buy BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill.