John Abell
Facts and comment
Wednesday 27 October 2010
“Reuters says” is exactly where an agency wants to be. This means hiring columnists with care. But running from this is bad business, and would give the forces who will just twist something else to manipulate a story what amounts to a heckler's veto. There are spades out there and refusing to acknowledge any of them just makes one look silly these days, not professional. And I will even go one further: context in news stories which doesn't paint a clear picture of the players' motives is also weak. The market understands what's going on. It's good to acknowledge the elephant in the story.
John C Abell
John C Abell
Facts and comment
Monday 25 October 2010
I agree more with John Abell. My beef is not with commentary or any new-fangled interaction with news users, but watering down the craft of journalism. Reporting is a profession. And as with any lawyer, chartered accountant or doctor worth consulting, reading my news I'd like to know I'm getting a professional product elaborated with due care in accordance with established best practice. If on top of the news file there are news analyses and personal columns, great. Clearly flagged as analysis and commentary. But Breakingviews is, as far as I can see, merely market froth whipped to momentary steady state, a souffle of rumours with deal-making as the egg white. It reeks of mentality of investment bankers, who know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Fine, as long as this is clearly flagged. Reporters have had opinions as long as doctors, lawyers and chartered accountants have. But, just like these professionals, they learn to use their professional tools and the skills of their craft to achieve outcomes that pass muster, whatever their views or the views of their "users" – because the thing they have in common is a shared understanding of news as a fair account of what has occurred.
Bjorn Edlund
Bjorn Edlund
Facts and comment
Sunday 24 October 2010
Anyone who thinks that reporters don't have opinions is a fool. Including a news agency's clients. But this isn't about having an opinion and writing a column. It's about having a vested, material interest in the subject of your reporting and/or commentary. That is wrong on the merits – and has nothing to do with whether Reuters should not have columnists. Of course it should. Of course it must. The market demands it. In half a generation at most the demand for transparency will make it impossible for journalists to continue to conceal for whom they vote in elections and which management teams they think stink. The markets will be better for it, because they always swim in transparency and sink in concealment, be it contrived for misplaced convenience or malicious.
John C Abell
John C Abell
Tom Glocer and Goldman Sachs
Saturday 01 May 2010
Tom Glocer seemed to complicate the question of Reuters' institutional ambivalence with ● a post on his personal blog in which he inveighed against a "rush to judgment" about financial giant Goldman Sachs after the SEC slapped the Wall Street behemoth with a civil fraud complaint. He states an obvious fact: Goldman is guilty of nothing until the company is found guilty of something, or agrees that it broke a rule or regulation.
Glocer was chided by the Newspaper Guild and lambasted by Michael Reupke and The New York Times wondered aloud what he was thinking. But shortly thereafter came a real object lesson into why the post may not have been the best idea: News that federal prosecutors are now investigating the company prompted a rush to judgment on Wall Street as investors shot Goldman shares down 10% to a nine-month low.
Ironically, Glocer's message was probably not directed at the markets, whose amorphous, amoral, extralegal and essentially unchallenged power to literally take sides at all times on anything is precisely what Reuters' business is based upon (to say nothing of the basis of the broad charge that Wall Street created or at least exacerbated the global financial meltdown).
It's great that Glocer is one of the world's few blogging CEOs despite major reasons he might think it's more trouble than it's worth: He is not only a material person who can't say certain things publicly but the head of a media company which takes extraordinary pride in its impartiality.
A Reuters columnist making the same points in the ● reuters.com Analysis and Opinion section probably wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. So the problem isn't really that he's taken the side of a concept enshrined in the US Constitution but that he did so in the context of a fast-breaking story being covered aggressively by people who report up to him who already know that they aren't supposed to pre-judge anything. It doesn't help that Goldman is a major client – at the very least an inconvenient truth.
I'm inclined to think that there is nothing sinister going on, even though the atmospherics are terrible. And it's just a tad odd that Reuters' first American CEO would seem to take a stand which, if followed, would curtail free speech since he isn't steeped in the British tradition where there may be a Speaker's Corner but no First Amendment and no real sense of individual entitlement to say whatever the Hell we want to.
The Goldman story will play out for some time and there will be lots of opinions expressed about the company's comportment from all sides – including on ● Reuters' own blogs, where James Saft asks rhetorically: "Seriously, would you let these guys repair your car or treat your house for termites?"
And that's the point. The hue and cry of the media and masses, as iteratively informed as they are at any given moment – and even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whom Glocer singles out for excess – are not part of the process Glocer wants to protect. Unless one is to believe that the SEC will be persuaded by the likes of Jon Stewart.
John C Abell
This is an abbreviated and slightly-altered version of a blog post on ● Planet Abell.
Glocer was chided by the Newspaper Guild and lambasted by Michael Reupke and The New York Times wondered aloud what he was thinking. But shortly thereafter came a real object lesson into why the post may not have been the best idea: News that federal prosecutors are now investigating the company prompted a rush to judgment on Wall Street as investors shot Goldman shares down 10% to a nine-month low.
Ironically, Glocer's message was probably not directed at the markets, whose amorphous, amoral, extralegal and essentially unchallenged power to literally take sides at all times on anything is precisely what Reuters' business is based upon (to say nothing of the basis of the broad charge that Wall Street created or at least exacerbated the global financial meltdown).
It's great that Glocer is one of the world's few blogging CEOs despite major reasons he might think it's more trouble than it's worth: He is not only a material person who can't say certain things publicly but the head of a media company which takes extraordinary pride in its impartiality.
A Reuters columnist making the same points in the ● reuters.com Analysis and Opinion section probably wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. So the problem isn't really that he's taken the side of a concept enshrined in the US Constitution but that he did so in the context of a fast-breaking story being covered aggressively by people who report up to him who already know that they aren't supposed to pre-judge anything. It doesn't help that Goldman is a major client – at the very least an inconvenient truth.
I'm inclined to think that there is nothing sinister going on, even though the atmospherics are terrible. And it's just a tad odd that Reuters' first American CEO would seem to take a stand which, if followed, would curtail free speech since he isn't steeped in the British tradition where there may be a Speaker's Corner but no First Amendment and no real sense of individual entitlement to say whatever the Hell we want to.
The Goldman story will play out for some time and there will be lots of opinions expressed about the company's comportment from all sides – including on ● Reuters' own blogs, where James Saft asks rhetorically: "Seriously, would you let these guys repair your car or treat your house for termites?"
And that's the point. The hue and cry of the media and masses, as iteratively informed as they are at any given moment – and even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whom Glocer singles out for excess – are not part of the process Glocer wants to protect. Unless one is to believe that the SEC will be persuaded by the likes of Jon Stewart.
John C Abell
This is an abbreviated and slightly-altered version of a blog post on ● Planet Abell.
Arthur Spiegelman
Monday 22 December 2008
Everyone has their favorite memories of Arthur. Mine run together during the days when Digger had his office next door to Arthur at 1700 Broadway. I’ve never come across two more original characters in my working days before or since. During those coffee and cigarette salons in Digger’s office, one or another of them was usually editing, writing, laughing, joking or spilling coffee – or worse, sipping coffee with a cigarette butt in the cup. The gathering would then shift to Arthur’s office and back again, journos coming in during their breaks because it was the perfect hang out. They’d take a call, chat a bit, then come back to the mix. Both instinctively knew the news, but also a good story, and not just in the written form. They riffed off each other, telling great stories. I looked on, bemused at these wise elders.
John Abell wrote movingly on his blog (http://planetabell.blogspot.com/2008/12/farewell-sweet-prince.html) how Arthur mentored him, and we all had experiences where Arthur helped us find the lead, or more accurately, the story, in the 800-word piece we’d already written. One comes to mind in my case about a feature I’d done about a jazz guitarist. Arthur told me I missed the lead, banged one out and then swung it back to me. A few days later it appeared as a big feature in the Int’l Herald Tribune. I was slightly amazed.
Those were great times. Arthur was very human in an increasingly corporate world. To me, he really was what the news was all about. I’ll miss him.
Sam Fromartz
John Abell wrote movingly on his blog (http://planetabell.blogspot.com/2008/12/farewell-sweet-prince.html) how Arthur mentored him, and we all had experiences where Arthur helped us find the lead, or more accurately, the story, in the 800-word piece we’d already written. One comes to mind in my case about a feature I’d done about a jazz guitarist. Arthur told me I missed the lead, banged one out and then swung it back to me. A few days later it appeared as a big feature in the Int’l Herald Tribune. I was slightly amazed.
Those were great times. Arthur was very human in an increasingly corporate world. To me, he really was what the news was all about. I’ll miss him.
Sam Fromartz
Steve Parry
Monday 10 November 2008
Steve was running things when I was permitted (for reasons which escape me) to cover the Mike Tyson unification fight in Vegas. Weeks later, when nothing was at stake and I happened to be in London, he was complimentary and generous – pretty much the prototype British Reuters editor of the time (to take nothing away from him personally!). Despite his kindness and encouragement I did not stay in the sports reporting dodge, which benefited me and especially Reuters greatly.
John C Abell
John C Abell
