One-time top New York Times editor John Geddes joined Bloomberg on Tuesday as US politics editor, in what most see as a bid to shore up the political coverage after a round of layoffs that targeted the DC bureau two months ago.
Bloomberg’s Washington bureau has been suffering from low morale amid a turf war with the New York bureau’s beefed-up political coverage. Founder Mike Bloomberg has been making cuts as he refocuses the company on its core financial news and data terminals.
Of the 55 people laid off on Sept. 1, about a dozen in the Washington bureau were whacked, including writer Dawn Kopecki, who had blasted the bureau’s treatment in a leaked email that pointed to “low morale” and a “leadership void.”
Jonathan Allen, the Washington bureau chief, quit to join Vox Media in the spring. Megan Murphy, from the Financial Times, was named DC bureau chief in August.
Geddes will technically be based in New York but will split his time between New York and DC. He will report to Murphy.
Geddes most recently was a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He was among those who took a buyout and exited the Times in 2013.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg said goodbye to 14 more journalists on Nov. 18, including three senior writers and two senior editors who had been working on Bloomberg Markets.
The company previously announced that Editor-in-Chief Ronald Henkoff was exiting. Remaining editors Joel Weber, Stryker McGuire and Jon Asmundsson are working on a prototype for an overhaul of the magazine that will be unveiled next March.