Bloomberg News started laying off and reassigning employees on Monday, seeking to emphasize areas that promote growth and focus more on core subjects like finance and government.

Also on Monday, Bloomberg said that a reporter based in Hong Kong who had worked on a controversial article about China, and who had been suspended since last week, had left the company. The reporter, Michael Forsythe, was the co-writer of an article that some Bloomberg employees said had been quashed for political reasons, an assertion that Bloomberg News denied.

The layoffs cut across several departments, including culture and sports, according to an email that Matthew Winkler, the Bloomberg News editor in chief, sent to employees on Monday evening. He said that the company was scaling back its art coverage and eliminating the Muse brand under which it was presented. It will stop covering sports matches and focus more on sports stories that intersect with business.

Bloomberg is also centralizing some departments, like its investigative unit, which will base its editors in Washington, instead of having them posted around the world.