The man who runs Bloomberg News

Dean Starkman of the Columbia Journalism Review writes Tuesday about Bloomberg News editor in chief Matthew Winkler, whose leadership style has been questioned.

Starkman’s piece is part story, part transcript of the often-tense interview he had with Winkler.

Starkman writes, “Current and former Bloomberg reporters regard Winkler as a temperamental and sometimes arbitrary leader given to issuing edicts that no one has the courage to contradict. A former reporter recalls how one of Winkler’s offhand gripes, about reporters sitting around reading newspapers, became transmogrified into an outright ban on newspaper reading in the newsroom. The misunderstanding was ultimately cleared up. A current reporter describes the tension on the fifth floor, where Winkler and his deputies preside, as palpable—and eases just as palpably as one walks downstairs to newsrooms below.

“Some reporters believe their movements are monitored to the extent that when they fail to touch their keyboard for fifteen minutes, a dot next to their name in the Bloomberg computer system shifts from green (meaning, basically, ‘logged in and active’) to yellow (for ‘idle’). This is technically true but in fact the dot system applies to all Bloomberg users, including customers. Winkler himself didn’t know the actual meaning of the yellow light when I asked him about it. Czelusniak says Bloomberg’s system is designed to allow staffers to get touch with each other quickly and to know, for instance, whether it’s worth messaging someone knowing they may not be at their desk.”

Read more here.