Bloomberg's Sending Around A Memo Informing Their Staff Of The First Newsroom Exec Shuffle In 5 Years - Here It Is
Matt Winkler, editor and chief, and founder of of Bloomberg News, is still at the helm, but 6 more editors will be helping out with Bloomberg News' operations.
And no, no one is losing their jobs. In fact there will be some spots open for promotions.
Now here's the dream team:
- Dan Hertzberg has been named Editor at Large.
- Reto Gregori , an 19 year veteran is now Deputy Editor.
- Josh Tyrangiel has been named a Senior Executive Editor for Consumer Products along with the Projects, Investigations, and Muse Arts/Culture Units.
- Otis Bilodeau has been named Executive Editor for the Finance team.
- And there are three people that have been elevated to the Senior Executive Level - Laurie Hays, Chris Collins, David Shipley, Marty Schenker.
Congrats to them. And now for the memo from Winkler:
Good morning, afternoon and evening, As we enter the final quarter of 2013, please accept congratulations for your exceptional work this year. We made progress in every region, on every beat and on every platform. We responded immediately to the unprecedented criticism by adopting new client-data security rules, creating a process to deal with reader complaints and by appointing our first Standards Editor, Tim Quinson. Most important, we remained focused on producing dozens of stories that shaped the investment agenda and changed the behavior of people with the most at stake. And I can't thank you enough.
Your Deals scoops moved billions of dollars in market value; your interviews with heads of state, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, reflect the unprecedented access Bloomberg News had to the most powerful people in the world. We were consistently ahead on the biggest trends in bank regulation and central bank policy in Europe, Asia and the Americas. We were first to reveal the resurgence of the U.S. car industry and the decline of confidence in gold, and scooped our local and international competitors at every point chronicling the implosion of Eike Batista's business in Brazil.
We also expanded our products. We created First Word for FX and successfully started the Korean language service. We enhanced the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which now tracks the world's 200 wealthiest people, and turned Bloomberg Pursuits into a successful quarterly luxury magazine. Bloomberg Businessweek released its first movie. Bloomberg.com is now the biggest site for business video. More than 150 new employees joined the Bloomberg News family so far this year.
All of this is only the beginning, and we have ambitious plans for the years ahead.
Before elaborating, let me provide some context of Bloomberg News as it evolved from a handful of reporters and editors in 1990 to 2,059 of us today. We started with four bureaus in three time zones. Today, there are 153 spanning the globe and reporting on money in all its forms. When the bureaus struggled to keep up with our customers' insatiable appetite for news, we created a system of reporting teams worldwide in 1998 with two dozen of them. Today, there are 214 teams. At the same time, Bloomberg Markets Magazine became a showcase for enterprise and depth reporting, winning more journalism awards in the ensuing decade than its three main competitors combined. By 2002, we brought print and broadcast news together for the first time, leveraging our news judgment across all media platforms with a management structure that ensured alignment. And in 2008, having gained responsibility for Bloomberg.com three years earlier, we reorganized again with 14 executive editors who would become 15 with the acquisition of BusinessWeek a year later. As we enter our 25th year, we can attribute our success to a willingness to embrace changes that foster the best practices that make us increasingly most influential. It's always been about us, not you, or me, him or her -- about what are WE going to do. You know it's no coincidence that the number of Bloomberg installations surged to 317,000 from 8,500 when Bloomberg News was conceived 24 years ago.
With our growth also come new challenges. Too many of our best stories get lost on the terminal or aren't showcased to the fullest on the platforms beyond the terminal. Some may not be worth doing. Others may be worth even more of our attention. We want to bring more focus to our organization, and that's why we've decided to adapt our management structure for the first time since 2008.
We want to:
- Ensure we're ideally positioned for growth
- Create more opportunities for career development for our most talented people
- Further develop our news products
- Make certain that I have more time to focus on our most important initiatives, including greater engagement with our expanding bureaus and newsmaker events
- And most of all, foster deeper collaboration among the various parts of Bloomberg News so our five easy pieces of economies, markets, companies, industries and government are aligned.
Going forward, we will have six Senior Executive Editors in charge of specific reporting and specific products; three of them will be reporting to me, and three will be reporting to Reto Gregori, who becomes Deputy Editor-in-chief while continuing his chief of staff duties.
Under this simplified structure, Executive Editors will continue to be responsible for their respective areas of coverage and their leadership of the news teams will be essential to our success. Our new approach will help us focus our resources on the most important stories and make it easier to plan coverage across beats and platforms, further increasing the influence of our reporting.
Laurie Hays, who transformed company news during the past five years, becomes Senior Executive Editor for Beat Reporting, reporting to me. She is now responsible for Markets, Finance, Companies, Government and Economy, with the beat executive editors reporting to her. This means that all teams that cover the Five Easy Pieces will be united for the first time.
Chris Collins, the executive editor for Asia, becomes Senior Executive Editor for Breaking News, reporting to me. The regional executive editors as well as the newly created Executive Editor for First Word will report to him. This new structure positions us for further growth of First Word and gives us a unified focus on breaking news in all our bureaus.
Standards Editor Tim Quinson also will be a Senior Executive Editor and report to me.
Josh Tyrangiel, the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg Digital, becomes Senior Executive Editor for Consumer Products, which will include Bloomberg Businessweek, the Web sites, as well as Projects & Investigations, overseen by Executive Editor Bob Blau, and Muse under Manuela Hoelterhoff. Josh will work with them to make our enterprise reporting as coordinated as possible and to give it the prominence it deserves across all platforms. Josh will report to Reto.
Marty Schenker, the executive editor for TOP, becomes Senior Executive Editor for Terminal News Products and Strategy, also reporting to Reto. Marty's universe includes TOP, Bloomberg Markets magazine as well as Development, and he will lead our efforts to develop news products that our terminal customers need and read.
David Shipley, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg View, will also report to Reto.
As part of this realignment, I'm excited to announce that Ken Kohn, currently the executive editor for Markets, becomes the new executive editor for TOP, succeeding Marty in his current role. Ken will return to New York in 2014.
Laura Zelenko, currently managing editor for emerging markets, succeeds Ken and will oversee all our markets reporting from New York.
Otis Bilodeau, the managing editor for Finance, succeeds Dan Hertzberg as executive editor for the finance teams. Dan plans to retire in February and will be an editor-at-large until then, focusing on the biggest stories.
Kevin Reynolds, the deputy executive editor for First Word and Speed, becomes the new Executive Editor for First Word globally.
David Merritt, currently the managing editor for India, succeeds Chris Collins as executive editor for Asia and will relocate to Hong Kong from Mumbai.
Marco Babic, currently the managing editor for economic data, becomes the executive editor for news data, reporting to Chris Collins.
As already announced, Heather Harris is now the executive editor for Europe, succeeding Tim Quinson. And
Koray Oncel is now our chief information officer, reporting directly to Marty.
To ensure there's greater opportunity for career development, we will post many of the open managing editor and team leader roles on PATH and welcome applications in the weeks ahead.
At this point, I'm thrilled to be able to already announce that Jackie Simmons, currently the team leader for Deals in Europe, is the new managing editor for company news in that region, succeeding Heather.
Christine Harper, currently the team leader for finance, becomes the managing editor for finance globally, succeeding Otis.
Katherine Cho, the deputy managing editor for Speed in Asia, becomes the Managing Editor for Speed in that region, while Victoria Richards will focus on First Word Asia.
And Arijit Ghosh, currently the bureau chief in Mumbai, will succeed David Merritt as managing editor for South Asia.
Please join me in congratulating everyone on their new roles, and rest assured, the best is yet to come.