Oliver Darcy reports in a tweet that John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg, has confirmed layoffs in a memo to staff, saying: "I am not going to pretend today is a happy day for the newsroom. It is always painful to tell journalists that they are losing their jobs."  

Micklethwait oversees editorial content across all Bloomberg platforms, including its news, newsletters, magazines, opinion, television, radio and digital properties.

Darcy puts the number of layoffs at about 90. Their locations and titles were not specified. 

According to the memo shared by Darcy, Micklethwait writes “we all know we have ‘lost” stories because we have moved too slowly. Teams waited for somebody to back-read a piece or ignored the requests from the News Desk to get a blast out quickly. Managers spent too much time in conference calls when they just should have been writing. Or teams suddenly delivered enterprise pieces that nobody wanted."

COVID-19 highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the staff, he continues. 

“”In light of this, we have decided to reorganize and sadly, this has meant losing some of our colleagues.”

The memo notes the main goal of the new structure is to “elevate editing.” Most editors will now report to managing editors. And the team will revert to the practice of “one story, one editor.” 

Micklethwait's memo also states: “I think these changes will make all of your jobs more interesting and give you a bigger say in the stories that you write and edit. But like all changes, there will be a period of adjustment.”