John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of The Economist, has been named editor in chief of Bloomberg News, replacing original editor in chief Matthew Winkler.
Winkler will become editor in chief emeritus, working directly with company founder Michael Bloomberg. He will work on strategic initiatives and conduct interviews.
After studying history at Magdalen College, Oxford, Micklethwait worked as a banker at Chase Manhattan between 1985 and 1987 before joining The Economist as a finance correspondent in 1987.
His previous roles at The Economist included being the newspaper’s business editor and United States editor, and he has been editor since 2006. The Economist now has a weekly print circulation of around 1.5 million worldwide, with 100,000 digital subscribers.
Micklethwait has appeared on radio and television around the world, and co-authored with Adrian Wooldridge, also an Economist journalist, five books: “The Witch Doctors,” “A Future Perfect,” “The Company,” “The Right Nation” and “God is Back.” He was named Editors’ Editor by the British Society of Magazine Editors in 2010. He is a trustee of the British Museum.
He will begin work at Bloomberg’s global headquarters in New York City shortly after the new year.
Mickelthwait will oversee editorial content across all Bloomberg platforms, including its news, newsletters, magazines, opinion, television, radio and digital properties, as well as its research services, including Bloomberg Intelligence and Bloomberg Brief. This will unite all of Bloomberg’s editorial content, which has expanded and diversified rapidly in recent years, and allow for greater collaboration and coordination across the company.
He will work closely with Justin Smith, CEO of the Bloomberg Media Group, who will continue to report directly to Mike Bloomberg on all business and strategy matters across Bloomberg’s diverse media properties.
Winkler founded the global news service with Michael Bloomberg in 1990 when he joined the then eight-year-old financial information company Bloomberg L.P. He became a member of the Bloomberg L.P. board in 2006.
“Hiring Matt Winkler 25 years ago was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” said Bloomberg in a statement. “He has accomplished more than either of us thought possible back then, and thanks to his exceptional leadership, Bloomberg has set a new standard for journalistic excellence. His experience will be enormously beneficial to me as I re-assume full-time leadership of the company.”
Winkler is co-author of “Bloomberg by Bloomberg” (April 1997, John Wiley & Sons) and author of “The Bloomberg Way: A Guide for Reporters and Editors,” (Wiley). Between 1991 and 1994, he wrote the Capital Markets column for Forbes magazine. Between July 1980 and February 1990, Winkler was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and news services of parent Dow Jones & Co. in New York and in London. Winkler was a New York-based reporter and assistant editor at The Bond Buyer (1978-1980); and a reporter for the Ohio-based Mount Vernon News (1976-1977).
Winkler received the 2007 Gerald Loeb Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing “exceptional career achievements in business, financial and economic news writing,” the 2007 National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences “Emmy” Lifetime Achievement Award for business and financial reporting and the 2003 New York Financial Writers’ Association Elliott V. Bell Award for making a “significant long-term contribution to the advancement of financial journalism.”
He received the National Council for Research on Women award in 2010 for promoting women. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s ban on selective disclosure of corporate information, known as Reg FD, was prompted by Bloomberg News’ reporting of market manipulation in the 1990s and the Federal Reserve’s disclosure of unprecedented loans during the 2007-2008 financial crisis resulted after courts affirmed Bloomberg’s Freedom of Information Act requests to the central bank.
Born in New York City in 1955, Winkler is a graduate of Kenyon College (A.B. in history, honorary doctorate of Laws); trustee of Kenyon and The Kenyon Review; trustee of the business journalism program of the City University of New York; director of the International Center for Journalists; member of the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists; the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York board and the International Women’s Media Foundation board; chairman, board of Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program at Columbia University; member of the Board of Visitors of Columbia College.
