Bloomberg News Lays Off 100, Restructures

Bloomberg News, the financial news service founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, which has mostly avoided the massive job losses seen in many media companies, announced today the layoff of about 100 employees and the restructuring of its operation.

According to a person familiar with the situation, the global cuts mostly targeted editors and represent about 3 percent of Bloomberg’s more than 31,000-person editorial and research staff. They were announced by Bloomberg Editor In Chief John Micklethwait in a memo to staff Thursday that Forbes.com obtained. 

According to Micklethwait, the global news organization has `lost’ stories because it moved too slowly because it had become mired in bureaucracy.

“Teams waited for somebody to back-read a piece or ignored the requests from the News Desk to get a blast out quickly,” he wrote. “Managers spent too much time setting up conference calls when they should just have been writing. Or teams suddenly delivered enterprise pieces that nobody wanted.”

Under Bloomberg’s new structure, most editors will report directly to managing editors, who can allocate them to teams story by story to avoid what Micklethwait described as “unnecessary back-reading or re-editing.” 

The news organization also plans to strengthen regional editing hubs, so there are more senior editors available to work on the most important stories and features, the memo says.

“Yes, of course, there will be more complicated pieces that require senior managers to be involved, but those are the exceptions,”  Micklethwait said. “We either trust an editor to handle a story, or we don’t. If we don’t like the end result, we give the editor candid feedback. The expanded hubs will also be ready to help.”

According to Micklethwait, Bloomberg News will employ as many journalists at the end of  2021 as before the coronavirus pandemic struck last year and increase its industry analysts’ ranks. It als plans to add staff in high-priority areas like data journalism. The company also is looking for more ways for “reporters and editors to take greater ownership of stories and beats,” Micklethwait said.

Bloomberg News is a small yet high-profile part of Mike Bloomberg’s Bloomberg LP, which provides data and content to around 225,000 financial professionals via the Bloomberg terminal, subscriptions to which cost about $20,000 a year. It also provides content to media partners around the world.

  According to Axios, Bloomberg Media, which includes Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg Wealth, and Bloomberg Green, expects to generate at least $100 million in consumer subscription revenue in 2021.