What’s your media job: Kait Bolongaro on moving from reporting to managing a 30-people team

Editor’s note: The Fix is running the “What’s your media job” series where we look at different job positions and career trajectories in and around the news industry. For this edition, we spoke with Kait Bolongaro, Managing Editor, Europe at MLex Market Insight. 

A few years ago Kait Bolongaro reported on the Canadian government for Bloomberg. Today she leads a team of about 30 people covering Europe at MLex Market Insight, a newswire focusing on regulatory risk.

The Fix spoke with Bolongaro about her career and current position. We asked her how she went from reporting to editing to managing within a few years – and what others can learn from this experience. 

MLex’s model and the managing editor’s job

MLex Market Insight was founded almost 20 years ago and specialises in regulatory risk – the risk businesses face from new legislation and regulation. Founded in Brussels, the organisation has about 70 journalists around the world and offices across several continents.

The publisher works for a niche audience of business clients who can afford an expensive subscription. The business model is fully subscription-based; MLex has a hard paywall with little coverage available for free and no advertising. In 2015 the publisher was purchased by global IT and analytics company LexisNexis.

As the managing editor for Europe, Kait Bolongaro leads a team of almost 30 correspondents and editors across two European offices in Brussels and London. Together with the publisher’s two other managing editors for Asia and the Americas, she reports to the editor-in-chief Richard Thompson.

Bolongaro is both the people manager of the people on her team and its most senior editor. She spends most of her time on management responsibilities – overseeing the team, hiring and onboarding new people. She says team building is an important part of her job and also perhaps the most fulfilling task she has. “I really enjoy developing my team members and developing the different reporters that work on the beats”.

Bolongaro is also involved in editing news stories throughout the day; she mostly edits longer analytical pieces that require more time than quick news stories. She says MLex has an intense focus on getting things right and a strong incentive on not putting out incorrect information that could erode subscriber trust.

Bolongaro is based in MLex’s Brussels office, and she has a deputy managing editor on the ground in the London office. She says effective team-building requires her to work from the office most weekdays rather than remotely and frequently visit London.

The path from reporter to senior manager

Kait Bolongaro started her journalism career as a freelancer while at university and worked as a reporter for several major news organisations, including Deutsche Welle, BBC, Politico and Bloomberg.

In 2021, while covering Canadian politics from Ottawa for Bloomberg, Bolongaro was looking to come back to Europe and transitioned to MLex as a senior editor. The job meant full-time story editing and did not come with management responsibilities. In early 2023 she was promoted to the position she holds today.

Within a few years Bolongaro transitioned from reporting to working as an editor and then to managing one of Brussels’ largest newsrooms. How has she handled this transition? Partly it was thanks to leadership training she received back at university, but the most important aspect was the support of her leaders and peers. “I spend a lot of time speaking to more senior folks or [MLex’s] two other managing editors [who] have a lot of experience managing”, Bolongaro says.

Her advice to journalists looking to transition from reporting to editing or management is to be prepared “to take your ego out of the equation”. “Reporters are used to getting the glory for big stories or a job well done, where editors and managers are more behind the scenes” and get recognition for longer-term work. 

A good manager should also have “the heart of a teacher”. Mentoring more junior team members is a big part of the job. Here, being generous with your time is critical, Bolongaro believes. “You have to go in willing to invest in people and be generous with your experience, try to find ways that you can help them”.

Editor’s note: this article was updated to clarify the number of journalists who work at MLex Market Insight.

Source of the cover photo: https://unsplash.com

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