Bloomberg reporter Jacobs owns the White House COVID beat

Jennifer Jacobs

Elahe Izadi of The Washington Post profiles Bloomberg News reporter Jennifer Jacobs, who has broken the news of multiple positive COVID cases within the White House.

Izadi reports, “She made headlines in February after the Trump campaign kicked her out of an Iowa event, in light of Bloomberg News’s editorial decision to not investigate founder Mike Bloomberg or his Democratic rivals during the 2020 campaign.

“During her time on the beat, Jacobs has broken news about job comings and goings, who attended certain high-level meetings and policy debates.

“‘She’s been the source of a lot of scoops in the Trump era, so it’s not at all surprising that she would continue to generate that on covid-19,’ said one veteran White House reporter.

“Beyond informing people who have been in and near the White House — including her fellow reporters — to the possibility they have been exposed to a deadly virus, these stories have also revealed how the administration has tried to keep outbreaks secret, even as the president projected confidence that the country was ’rounding the turn’ on the pandemic.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.