John Brecher is the executive editor for enterprise at Bloomberg News. He just received the Gerald Loeb 2014 Lawrence Minard Editor award for excellence in business editing. The award is one of two career achievement awards given each year.
In Depth recently spoke with John to commend him on winning the award and discuss his career and his role with Bloomberg.
Congratulations on winning the 2014 Lawrence Minard Editor Award! What does it mean to you to receive this honor?
It’s unbelievably flattering — and humbling — to be recognized by my peers, especially since my peers are journalists, who can be very tough judges. As an editor, a great deal of your job — if you’re doing it right — is to say no. “No, that’s not a good idea; no, that’s not reported deeply enough; no, that’s not a good first paragraph.” I imagine every good editor goes home many nights feeling beaten up and unloved. To have my colleagues tell me that all of that tough love actually made their work better — well, that’s really touching.
The Minard Award recognizes an editor who works behind the scenes day in and day out. Can you talk about the importance of a good editor in crafting coverage and developing stories?
An editor is part guide and part psychologist. A bad idea will never be a good story, so a great deal of an editor’s job is to make sure ideas have merit. After that, constant feedback throughout the reporting process is critical — “Have you talked to this person, visited this place, checked these records? Did you follow this lead aggressively enough? Did you give everyone a chance to express their viewpoint fully and fairly?” When it comes to writing, or rewriting, I want to work with reporters to tell their stories as clearly and briskly as possible so that readers will be touched by them in some way — and remember them.
As the executive editor for enterprise content, you work more with long-term stories instead of day-to-day coverage. What’s a typical work day at Bloomberg like for you?
Some enterprise is long-term, and some isn’t. What it all has in common is that it comes from the minds of reporters. Bloomberg has so many great reporters all over the world, experts in just about everything under the sun. My job, ultimately, is to make sure that all of those reporters are developing the very best ideas they can. Since I work with more than 1,000 reporters and editors, as you can imagine, my phone is always ringing and my inbox is a mess.
How does enterprise coverage fit into Bloomberg’s mission to be the leading source of global business news?
Our readers want to get the news first, and Bloomberg does that like no one else. They also want to feel that they have a front-row seat to watch the ever-changing global zeitgeist. We were the first to identify early withdrawals from 401(k) as the new home equity loan, which quickly became conventional wisdom. We changed the discussion of the problems of meager retirement savings, most notably with our stories about a 77-year-old burger flipper and America’s oldest postman. We were the first to tell the real inside story of the Keystone pipeline with exclusive, fly-on-the-wall information from both the U.S. and Canadian sides. Bloomberg readers know first what everyone will be talking about.
I understand you’re also a wine enthusiast and wrote a wine column with your wife for many years. Can you share a bit about your passion for wine, and wine writing?
My wife, Dorothy J. Gaiter, and I conceived and wrote the Wall Street Journal’s weekly wine column, called “Tastings,” from 1998 to 2010. We also wrote four books about wine and were regulars on radio and television, including Martha Stewart’s show. We pretty much remember our whole lives together through the wine we were having at the time, like the Salon Le Mesnil Champagne we touched to our first daughter’s lips as she was born, and the Taittinger we touched to our second. But that’s another story — or several thousand, in fact.