[michaelbuck]

At least some part of it has to be the amount of attention these news pieces get on wsb itself. The subreddit has about 1.5 million subscribers. Any news piece by Bloomberg or Wallstreetjournal talking about r/wallstreetbests instantly gets posted over there and usually garners huge amounts of upvotes. Pretty much free traffic/ad impressions.

Example: https://reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/dj5xru/u_did_it...

[rsynnott]

Yeah; it's a similar phenomenon to when parts of the financial press were taking bitcoin perhaps more seriously than it warranted a few years ago. Good way to expose the enthusiasts to your ads.

[Wh1zz]

Ad money off news stories is a rounding error in the rounding error of Bloomberg's revenue.

[john_miller]

but probably not to "Contributing Editor[s]" and the like