Bloomberg Media Group CEO Justin Smith will step down from the business news giant to launch his own media company. A Bloomberg spokesperson confirmed the news, and that Scott Havens will succeed Smith as CEO.
“After 8 years at Bloomberg Media, and more than 25 years in quality journalism, I’ve decided to pursue a personal dream, and a market opportunity, to launch a new kind of global news media company that serves unbiased journalism to a truly global audience,” Smith said Tuesday.
New York Times media columnist Ben Smith will join Justin Smith at the new venture, the Times reported.
Smith had led Bloomberg Media since 2013, and before that was president of Atlantic Media, which owned The Atlantic. Bloomberg’s media division includes Bloomberg’s digital news division, the magazine Bloomberg Businessweek, the streaming service QuickTake, the company’s live-events business, Bloomberg Radio, and Bloomberg TV.
During his tenure, he pivoted Bloomberg to focus on digital content and pushed the company into streaming through its TicToc streaming offering, which was later rebranded as QuickTake. QuickTake relaunched a little over a year ago, with Smith telling THR at the time that “the shift in consumption in business information, financial information and more general quality news information has decisively moved away from linear television to digital and largely social mobile platforms.”
Bloomberg Media also signed with WME about a year ago in an effort to turn its stories into film and TV projects.
The Wall Street Journal first reported Smith’s departure.
