Mike Snider

USA TODAY

The editor of Bloomberg Businessweek is among those leaving Bloomberg LP after a recent round of layoffs.

About 30 journalists in the U.S., Europe and Asia were laid off or left Thursday as part of the business media company's latest move to restructure its news operation, a person familiar with the matter told USA TODAY. The person asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

The New York-based financial news empire has undergone layoffs each of the last two years and it joins other media outlets such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Gannett, which owns USA TODAY and more than 100 local news properties, recently forced to downsize.

"We simply need to do more – and that does involve making some structural changes," said Bloomberg Editor In Chief John Micklethwait and Bloomberg Media Chief Executive Justin Smith in a memo sent to employees obtained by USA TODAY, but reported earlier on by Talking Biz News and The Wall Street Journal.

Micklethwait, formerly the top editor of The Economist, came to Bloomberg last year to assist company founder Michael Bloomberg in a reorganization of the news operation.

Bloomberg editor reorganizes newsroom leadership

According to the memo, Bloomberg Businessweek editor Ellen Pollock and deputy editor Brad Wieners will depart. The new editor of Businessweek will be Megan Murphy, the former Financial Times Washington bureau chief hired last year to helm Bloomberg's bureau in the nation's capital. She and new deputy editor Otis Bilodeau, a 13-year Bloomberg financial news journalist and previously Bloomberg TV executive editor, will put out the magazine under its current form until a makeover launches in the second quarter of 2017, the memo says.

Businessweek journalists will be better integrated into the rest of the newsroom, Micklethwait and Smith say in the memo. "Our content needs to become more targeted on business and finance, more global and more digital, with daily offerings of news, insights and analysis that help readers understand and compete in the world," they said.

Bloomberg will also merge its Markets, First Word and Web teams, under Executive Editor Madeleine Yim, to "reduce duplication and create one global group," said a memo from Senior Executive Editor Chris Collins. "The goal is a modernized suite of coverage that reflects the sophistication of our readers - and delivers agenda-setting stories alongside immediate breaking news and analysis," he said.

With All Due Respect, the Bloomberg Politics show will end after Inauguration Day and Mark Halperin and John Heilemann -- who also appeared on the Showtime presidential TV show The Circus -- will continue as consultants and contributors, according to that memo and another separate memo on politics coverage acquired by the Journal.

Privately held Bloomberg, founded in 1981 by the one-time New York Mayor Bloomberg, employs about 19,000 globally including 2,600 journalists and analysts. In addition to the magazine, the company's holdings include its lucrative financial news and data terminal business, Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg TV and lifestyle magazine Pursuits.

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