Reuters pictures of the year 2014

Reuters Pictures of the Year 2014 are extraordinary indeed. Brilliant. Thirty years of News Pictures, courtesy Michael Nelson’s vision. Plus, of course, the many highly competent ex-UPI and Reuters heavyweights who made it happen since.

Two key concepts today’s habitual Thomson Reuters cost cutters have not understood, it seems:

1.“A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” (Oscar Wilde).

2. Even if Albert Mehrabian’s "7% (words), 38% (sound) and 55% (visual) rule might not fully apply to news reporting, the fact remains that the bulk of information that is consumed and retained is visual. Cutting down on visuals is tantamount to cutting off the nose to spite the face. Will we likewise “see” clips on Reuters Graphics and Reuters Television of the Year 2014? Or do “the budget” or “resources” not allow for this?

You were a visionary, Mr Thomson, buying Reuters. Still, today you’re in need of someone that gets your company to become competent in selling again. Your company, products and services remain highly sellable, whatever excuses some of your key people may still use today to justify their lack of client and revenue growth. Continued denial that top line growth is always a bigger priority than the easy cost cutting option is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy and may just lead to an unwelcome tipping point. Cut the cost cutters, bring in the client, sales and revenue oriented trend setters.

The way your cost cutters see the problem is part of the problem. “If you always do what you did, you’ll always get what you got.” Or, as Albert Einstein observed, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

Create and (re)install the revenue growing culture and habit, for, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” (Aristotle). Excellence in producing the news and client retention and acquisition that is.

Best wishes for 2015. ■