Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait has spent the past year punishing the rank and file for spotty performance when he revealed cuts to the editorial and research departments.
The cuts amount to a little less than 3 percent of the number of employees, which currently numbers about 3,100.
“As an editorial office, we’ve learned a lot over the past 12 months,” wrote Micklethwait, who took over at Bloomberg News in 2015 after a spell on top of The Economist, in a memo obtained by Media Ink. “At our best, we’ve been unbeatable.”
But then he lowered the hammer – focusing mainly on dragging feet in the newsroom.
“We all know that we also ‘lost’ stories because we moved too slowly,” he continued. “Teams waited for someone to read back or ignored the News Desk’s requests to get a quick blast. Managers spent too much time setting up conference calls when they should have just been writing. Or teams suddenly delivered business items that no one wanted.
“Covid has highlighted these strengths and weaknesses. But in reality they have been apparent for a while. “
Most of the cuts are in the editorial ranks he’s trying to develop to move stories faster.
“This was not a step we took lightly. But we’ve always tried to improve the newsroom – to make us more agile, to improve our content, and to help us describe capitalism in an even more comprehensive way. “
“A system that relies on someone down the production line to correct mistakes means no one owns a story,” added Micklethwait. “We need accountability: you only sign a story when you think it is ready to be published. You are responsible for it. We also need editors who can work for more than one team. “
A spokeswoman declined to comment when asked if certain stories triggered the outbreak for the company owned by former mayor Mike Bloomberg.