John Micklethwait, Bloomberg News ’chief editor, demonstrated the basics of erratic performance over the past year as he unveiled cuts of about 90 people in the publishing and research departments.
The cuts account for just under 3 percent of employees who currently total about 3,100.
“As an editor, we’ve learned a lot over the last twelve months,” wrote Micklethwait, who took over as helm of Bloomberg News in 2015 after a stint at The Economist, in a note obtained by Media Ink. “At our best, we’ve been unbeatable.”
But then he lowered his hammer, trying to drag his feet to the newsroom.
“We all know we also‘ lost ’stories because we moved too slowly,” he continued. “Teams waited for someone to re-read a piece or ignored requests at the information desk to get an explosion quickly. Administrators spent too much time setting up conference calls when they should only have been typing. Or the teams suddenly delivered business pieces that no one wanted.
“Covid highlighted these strengths and weaknesses. But, in reality, they have been evident for some time ”.
Most of the cuts are in the editorial rows you try to design to move stories faster.
“This was not a step we took lightly. But we have always tried to improve the wording: to make ourselves more agile, to improve our content, and to help us “chronicle capitalism” in an even more complete way.
“A system that relies on someone down the production line to correct mistakes means no one has a story,” Micklethwait added. “We need accountability: you close the session on a story only when you think it’s ready to be published. You’re responsible for it. We also need editors who can work for more than one team.”
A spokeswoman declined to comment when asked if any particular story triggered the explosion of the company owned by former Mayor Mike Bloomberg.