Staffers on Bloomberg Markets are feeling the heat following the recent shake-up at the top of the editorial masthead of Mike Bloomberg’s company.
The magazine is a favorite of Matthew Winkler, the longtime editor-in-chief — who officially gets booted upstairs next month to make way for new E-I-C John Micklethwait, who joins from The Economist. He was a surprise outside pick last December.
Insiders said that the Markets staff has already been put on notice by Senior Executive Editor Josh Tyrangiel, who is the Bloomberg Media operation’s top editorial executive.
Tyrangiel is said to have recently told staffers they have 60 days to shape up. The ultimatum was rather vague — but many are said to be fretting that their jobs are in jeopardy even if the magazine survives.
Bloomberg Markets, which goes out as a free publication to the 320,000 users of Bloomberg terminals, was officially assigned to the Bloomberg Media Group last year. Its longtime chief editor Ron Henkoff was made to report to Tyrangiel.
The media group includes Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which gained critical acclaim while Tyrangiel was running it, as well as the TV, radio and web operations.
The media group’s CEO is Justin Smith and a year ago he had given Tyrangiel a much bigger portfolio — heading up all the operations in the group.
The group loses tens of millions of dollars a year — but it does not matter much because the terminal business that is the heart and soul of the company generates about 85 percent of the company’s estimated $9 billion a year in revenue, and it is phenomenally profitable.
The Bloomberg news team under the direction of Winkler supplied the breaking news to the terminal users.
Bloomberg Markets had been a pet project of Winkler’s, who was instrumental in pushing it to win awards for investigative journalism. Others inside the company were not so enthralled and thought some of its coverage was less than inspiring.
Tyrangiel is not a fan of the publication, sources said. Although it goes free to the 320,000 terminal users, it was Winkler who also pushed to give it a paid newsstand presence.
It currently has a rate base of 375,000, which means it is selling about 50,000-plus copies a month to non-terminal customers.
But that pales in comparison to the weekly paid circulation of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which is 975,000.
Tyrangiel’s recent ultimatum, some insiders have whispered, includes a push to have the title contribute more to the breaking news and web operations.
A company spokesman declined to comment on the speculation swirling about Bloomberg Markets.
Meanwhile, the new consumer website, Bloomberg Business, is said to be hard at work trying to iron out the glitches that forced it to cancel its Jan. 20 launch preview.