Bloomberg names Fraher head of ESG coverage, promotes others

Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait sent out the following on Thursday:

It is often hard to predict exactly what we will write about. Who would’ve put a pandemic down on the list of stories for 2020? Even with that caveat, however, it seems safe to say that ESG will only grow as a subject for us over the next few years.

Every company, investor and government around the world is focusing ever more attention on environmental, social and governance issues. Indeed ESG has become a core ingredient of the capitalism that we as a newsroom try to chronicle.

We have a huge number of strengths. On the research side, we have the expertise of BNEF, a clear market leader, while BI is building its presence in ESG. We have our new ESG page on the Terminal and our daily newsletter, while Green and Equality are two of our fastest growing consumer franchises. Rakshita Saluja‘s team has helped transform the way the whole newsroom reports on race, gender and social justice, while Green, under Aaron Rutkoff, has given a new focus to our environmental coverage. Last year we were granted extra headcount for ESG editors and reporters, which is part of a broader push across the company.

To reflect this greater importance, we will bring together all the different parts of our ESG journalism under John Fraher – who will also join the Editorial & Research management committee with responsibility for ESG and Energy. John has done a wonderful job running our business and finance coverage and overseeing the rise of Green. His new mission will not just be to increase our coverage of ESG around the world; I also want him to deepen the coordination between the ESG Investing, Green and Equality teams (as well as working closely with Jon Moore and David Dwyer’s research teams). He will need all our help. Even though we will now have a bigger, more global and more coordinated ESG team, we will rely on the whole newsroom to cover the subject. If you have an ESG story please reach out to John’s team for guidance, but under most circumstances you should expect to write (or broadcast) it yourself.

In terms of reporting lines, John will add Rakshita Saluja’s Equality team and will keep Will Kennedy‘s commodities group. The energy transition is a massive part of the climate story and the excellent coverage from Will’s group gives us a huge edge over the competition when it comes to climate and ESG news.

Caroline Gage and Brian Bremner will be promoted to Senior Executive Editors and report directly to Heather Harris, with Tina Davis‘s legal team now reporting into Caroline. I should stress that, although their reporting lines are changing, the coverage remits for both Will and Tina will remain the same.

In addition, we’ve appointed John Liu, Katherine Cho, Dan Hauck, Chris Nagi and Monique White as Senior Executive Editors.

We’ve already had a promising start to the new year, with many exclusives and insightful enterprise. Readership and usage are both trending in the right direction. I’m convinced that these management changes will make us even stronger.