Bloomberg made a rare cut to staff in a newsroom overhaul. Read the memo breaking down the changes.

Business Insider

4 days ago

Bloomberg is making a rare staff cut as it reorganizes its newsroom, but plans to end the year with a bigger head count, according to a memo from editor in chief John Micklethwait, which was viewed by Business Insider.
Micklethwait announced several changes in the newsroom's structure to support three particular areas of recent focus:
Bloomberg is merging some finance teams and consolidating them under Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam to support its coverage of private markets.
It's also combining teams that focus on front-page news to provide more consistency in how news shows up throughout the week, a shift that will let Bloomberg put more attention on the rollout of AI tools across the newsroom.
Third, it's centralizing video editorial under Kristin Powers, mirroring its audio editorial model.
While layoffs have become commonplace across the media landscape, staff reductions at Bloomberg's media arm are rare. The newsroom is one of the largest in the US and is partly insulated by its ownership by Michael Bloomberg's financial information giant Bloomberg LP, whose key product, the Bloomberg Terminal, is widely used on Wall Street. The company also has a history of hiring in economic downturns.
Bloomberg declined to comment on the scale of the cuts. Among those affected was editor Ian Fisher.
Here's Micklethwait's full memo to staff:
Our newsroom is always evolving. The capitalism that we chronicle keeps changing while the habits of our readers, listeners and viewers are also continually shifting. So we are always looking for ways in which we can improve our coverage. Look around Editorial & Research and we are currently adding people in Washington to cover the Trump presidency, expanding BI to cover more mid-cap companies, developing our geoeconomics and emerging markets offering, launching tech-focused TV programs in Europe and Asia, rolling out our Weekend product and experimenting with AI to improve our translation, summaries and our data journalism. Change is a constant.
However, if you look back over the past few years, three areas where we have leapt forward a long way stand out. We have deepened our coverage of private markets and credit, leading the way in a fast-growing part of the financial markets that is a priority for our company. We have continued to strengthen the ways we deliver and package news across our platforms, and record usage on the Terminal and strong growth in digital subscriptions are testament to our success. And we have built up our expertise in video - as proven by the two Emmys we won last month and the release of "Can't Look Away."
Today we are announcing several changes in our structure to consolidate our achievements in each of these three areas - and set ourselves up for future expansion.
Our advance into private markets has involved intense collaboration between our Credit and Finance groups. We now think the time is right to combine those teams - as well as Legal, Wealth and Investing - under the leadership of Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam. In a sign of how important Credit, Finance, Investing, Legal and Wealth are to us, Sree will join our Editorial & Research Management Committee.
Shannon Harrington, Executive Editor for Global Credit, will report into Sree as will two new Executive Editors: We will post for an Executive Editor for Finance, Investing & Legal in the Americas and an Executive Editor for Credit and Finance in APAC. In APAC, the Finance Managing Editor (Luo Jun) and the Credit Managing Editor (Andrew Monahan) will report to the new Executive Editor, with the Credit Managing Editor having a dual reporting line into Shannon.
Given the intensity of the story in the US, we are also uniting the Legal team with Financial Regulation under Managing Editor Benjamin Bain. Both Ben and the Finance & Investing Managing Editor for the Americas (Michael Moore) will report to the new Americas Executive Editor. The Managing Editors for Global Wealth (Brian Chappatta), Europe Finance & Investing (Tom Metcalf) and Mideast Money (Adveith Nair) will retain their reporting line into Sree.
Dan Hauck, who has overseen the combined Credit and Deals groups with great skill for the past six years, will continue to oversee Deals and still report into Heather Harris. Dan will work closely with Sree and Shannon on private equity in particular, where we have had a string of exclusives this year. He will also take on the editing mentoring work previously done by Wes Kosova.
One thing I must stress about Credit: although the growth in private markets has provided the catalyst for us to change formation, it doesn't in any way diminish our coverage of the much larger public credit markets where our customers rely on us to be first with new issues, loan deals and debt restructurings. Links with the other markets teams will remain as strong as ever and credit reporters will continue to file most of their stories into the Markets Editing hubs.
The second set of changes focuses on our front pages across all our platforms. The News Desks have for years been the arbiters of which stories we put in front of our readers on the Terminal and the Web during the workweek, while the 24/7 team built our successful offerings for mobile and oversaw news on the weekend. This setup made sense to get Daybreak and Bloomberg Today off the ground but it no longer fits a seven-day news cycle, where readers expect the same news judgment from us wherever they are and whatever day it is.
So we are combining the teams and reshaping the News Desks in each region, with one group overseeing front pages and news alerts (the now), one group looking ahead (Daybreak and Planning) and one group in charge of enterprise (the hub). Matt Miller will continue to oversee breaking news and economic data and devote more of his time to another of our key initiatives, the rollout of AI tools across the newsroom.
In the Americas under News Director Emma Moody, Alan Goldstein will join the desk as Executive Editor, with Managing Editors Katherine Cho and Kevin Whitelaw (weekends) reporting to him. Alison Ciaccio becomes Managing Editor for Planning and Daybreak, reporting to Emma, and Pratish Narayanan continues to oversee the hub as Executive Editor. The Web team under Lindsey Rupp continues to dual-report to the News Desk and Digital.
In Asia, News Director Mike Patterson will be joined by Linus Chua as Executive Editor. Maggie Otte and Shamim Adam (weekends) remain as Managing Editors and will report into Linus. The digital homepage team under Kristine Servando will dual-report into the News Desk and Saira Asher, Managing Editor for Digital in Asia. Emily Cadman continues to run the hub, and we will post for the Managing Editor for Daybreak and Planning.
Our EMEA News Director Ros Mathieson is keen to return to Asia, and I'm delighted that she will become our Chief Asia Correspondent based in Singapore, a new role reporting to John Fraher and Madeleine Lim. Will Kennedy will succeed her as News Director in London. His leadership team will include Executive Editors James Ludden (front pages, alerts) and Edward Evans (hub), and we will post for the Managing Editor roles for Daybreak/Planning and the front pages. A new digital homepage team under Niveditha Ravi will dual-report to the desk and Sarah Muller. Shiyin Chen will continue to oversee weekend news, reporting into James, while Adam Blenford moves to Katherine Bell's weekend team as a Senior Editor. We will post for a successor to Will as head of Energy and Commodities shortly.
The third set of changes focus on video. On the business side of Bloomberg Media, Roman Mackiewicz took over leading the video end-to-end strategy four months ago. To better align the editorial side with this (and also mirror our successful audio editorial model), we are unifying video editorial under Kristin Powers' leadership. Kristin has a wealth of experience across all our platforms - and helped launch both Green Docs and "Can't Look Away." Julie Alnwick McHale will continue to run Bloomberg Television and expand her remit to oversee all video news; Regina Dellea will be in charge of our studio, Bloomberg Originals; and Amina Wilson will be head of development for all programming, an expanded role. Julie, Regina and Amina will all report to Kristin, who will also continue to serve as Dave Merritt's deputy. The video alignment follows the successful integration of radio and podcasts in one audio division under Anthony Mancini two years ago.
To enable Kristin to focus on video, we are making some more changes in the Media Editorial group. Ted Fine and his partnerships team will now report to Julie Alnwick McHale. Emily Anton will take the lead for cross-platform projects. Loly Chan will run production across Businessweek and Markets magazines reporting into Katie Boyce. And we also want to simplify our approach to still images. For years we have run separate photography teams, serving our magazines, features, and the newswire. We'll now unite them into one group, led by Aeriel Brown and reporting up to Chris Nosenzo. We'll also be moving Dorothy Gambrell and Mark Glassman onto Martin Keohan's wider Data Viz group. These two changes will build on the success of our combined design merger.
Finally on the Media side, continuing our drive to build up our consumer product in Asia, Stephanie Phang will move over to Emma O'Brien's group where she will oversee our growing suite of newsletters that are helping us reach new audiences in the region. We will post for a new Managing Editor for Southeast Asia shortly.
As part of all these changes, we have sadly had to say goodbye to some colleagues. That too is part of how a newsroom evolves and gets stronger. To those who worry that this is driven by cost cutting, I will point out that we will end this year with a bigger newsroom than we started it. We have a responsibility not only to deliver the best content we can to our customers but also to create that content as efficiently as possible.
Reto and I and the rest of our leadership team are confident that these changes - as well as the long list of ongoing improvements and expansions that I mentioned at the beginning of this note - will all help us provide an even better Chronicle of Capitalism. And I am also certain that the newsroom and indeed our broader department will continue to evolve and change shape in the years ahead. The best, as we have occasionally pointed out before, is yet to come.