Exclusive: Bloomberg Poaches Star Business Writer Joe Nocera From New York Times
Mike Bloomberg personally intervenes to hire biz legend who'd been exiled to sports
Even billionaires covet that which they cannot possess. The Observer has learned that former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has long been known to crave the reach and authority of the New York Times for his own media empire, has lured away star New York Times writer Joe Nocera. In an official announcement tomorrow, it will be revealed that Nocera is taking a senior position at Bloomberg Media.
According to a source familiar with the specifics of the deal, Nocera’s gig is wide-ranging and will touch a variety of products within Bloomberg, whose BusinessWeek title just abruptly fired editor in chief Ellen Pollock a year after losing her predecessor, wunderkind Josh Tyrangiel.
“Joe will have a hand in redesigning the magazine, and he will work with Shipley,” said the source, referring to David Shipley, the executive editor of Bloomberg View. Shipley has his own history at the New York Times, having served as deputy editorial page editor and op-ed page editor before being lured to Bloomberg to start “View” as a rival to the vaunted opinion organs at the Times, the Wall Street Journal and the resurgent Washington Post.
Reached at a noisy restaurant on the Upper West Side, Nocera told the Observer, “I am excited to be getting back to what I do best — write about business. Bloomberg is giving me this amazing opportunity, which is to write magazine stories and to write columns. Which is what I do.”
The back story here contains some fascinating interplay.
At the end of 2015, when Andrew Rosenthal was still the emperor of all Times opinion, he suddenly converted Nocera to a sports writer. The move puzzled Times watchers – Nocera is a legend among business writers and his decade at Fortune magazine served as a master class for a generation of business writers who came of age during the frothy period between 1995-2005, when the explosion of the Internet and its subsequent crash created a critical need for journalists who could actually report with skepticism and read a balance sheet....MORE
