The powerful triumvirate inside Bloomberg — once nicknamed “Jay cubed” — is now down to just one J: Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith.
And there are growing whispers inside and outside the company that Smith might be the next high-level executive to leave the company.
Chief Content Officer and Businessweek Editor-in-Chief Josh Tyrangiel, who told employees in a memo on Thursday that his last day at the data and business news giant would be Friday, seemed so close to Smith philosophically that they used to be called “J&J” by insiders.
When Smith and Tyrangiel last year hired Joshua Topolsky away from the Verge to be the man to lead the reinvention of Bloomberg’s digital content, J&J grew into “Jay cubed.”
But it all slowly unraveled as the company’s billionaire owner Mike Bloomberg returned in 2014 and by year’s end had taken the CEO reins back from his pal Dan Doctoroff — who had hired Smith in September 2013.
Topolsky was fired in July after clashing with the former mayor regarding home page design.
Before arriving at Bloomberg LP, in September 2013, Smith was seen as something of a digital wizard. He helped turn a profit for David Bradley at The Atlantic, a perennial money loser, and relaunched Quartz, its Web operation. He had also co-founded the Breaking Media b-to-b digital business.
While Smith was able to cut losses at Businessweek by two-thirds — by some estimates the red ink is down to $20 million a year — the magic has not been replicated across all the consumer-facing media operations.
Those operations, particularly TV, still lose tens of millions of dollars a year. Many of the initiatives that were favored as “investments” in the past regime have been seen as money pits in the current regime.
Thomas Secunda, Bloomberg vice chairman and the No. 2 largest individual shareholder in the privately held company, just behind Mayor Mike, is a strong advocate for concentrating on the core terminal business that the company built its fortune upon.
Rumors as to where Smith might be headed if he resigns range from a return to Atlantic Media, to CNN or to another cable TV outlet.
Smith appeared on an Advertising Week panel in New York on Thursday where he seemed to support the Bloomberg brand, but did not return a call for comment from Media Ink.
A Bloomberg spokesman insisted that Smith and Mike Bloomberg still have a great relationship and that some of the consumer-facing media are still expanding.
“Justin is very happy at Bloomberg, and his strong results speak for themselves,” the spokesman said.