Nelson Graves
Changing editorial priorities
Sunday 11 March 2012
I’m scratching my head [● Clients see Thomson Reuters as ‘early innovator who fell behind’]. After all that TR has done to shift its attention from customers on the trading side to long-form journalism geared for the US media market and Pulitzer Prize judges, they now discover that they are losing the edge on the sell side? Imagine that!
Nelson Graves
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Nelson Graves
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Thomson Reuters commitment to news
Wednesday 07 December 2011
Re ● New Thomson Reuters CEO backs editorial hiring plans - Stephen Adler, the jury is out whether Thomson Reuters managers will recognize the value of a news organization that is trying, as Jon Friedman puts it, to “maintain a strong position in the meat-and-potatoes work of covering the financial markets while making a name for Reuters in enterprise writing.” The Wall Street Journal’s parents know as well as anyone how difficult it is for the two to co-exist comfortably and profitably under one roof. For decades Reuters managers said the meat-and-potatoes variety, while it didn’t win seats on the US Sunday talk shows, was what paying clients wanted. Tom Glocer was not a journalist, but he put the company’s money where his mouth was when he spoke in favor of the value of Reuters news. Some Reuters journalists will disagree on Glocer, but the ranks grew under his watch despite hard times in most other news organizations. Although James Smith was once a journalist, are we sure he and the Thomson family have the same view and will make the same commitment over time?
Nelson Graves
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Nelson Graves
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Reuters Cultural Revolution
Wednesday 19 October 2011
This Soros-OWS incident – fiasco? – is not a matter of news co-existing with commentary in the same news organisation
[● Stephen Adler spells it out: stick to Reuters standards]. Some of the best newspapers in the world have proved for decades that the two can thrive together. The incident suggests something far more profound is under way at Reuters. We seem to be seeing a Cultural Revolution, with Reuters’ historic values and practices shelved in favour of a whole new approach, geared to the US media scene. At least that is the view from outside, and Adler sidesteps the issue. One would have hoped for a more vigorous condemnation and not an apology for opinion pieces, which this was not.
Nelson Graves
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[● Stephen Adler spells it out: stick to Reuters standards]. Some of the best newspapers in the world have proved for decades that the two can thrive together. The incident suggests something far more profound is under way at Reuters. We seem to be seeing a Cultural Revolution, with Reuters’ historic values and practices shelved in favour of a whole new approach, geared to the US media scene. At least that is the view from outside, and Adler sidesteps the issue. One would have hoped for a more vigorous condemnation and not an apology for opinion pieces, which this was not.
Nelson Graves
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'Biased' Reuters report
Friday 14 October 2011
Today is the 160th anniversary of the founding of Reuters. The Baron must be revolving at a rapid rate of knots in his grave.
Felix Salmon is spot on [● Blogger disowns ‘biased’ Reuters report]. When I read the original story, I thought to myself: “This never should have made it past a down-table sub’s desk. It is over-stretching – and to what end? To try to win space in the US online gutter?”
As Reuters strives above all to compete with each and every US media organisation, regardless of their political affiliations, we can expect to see more and more substandard stories such as this. It’s what you get when you abandon the course you have charted for 160 years and set anchor on Manhattan.
Nelson Graves
nbnbn
Felix Salmon is spot on [● Blogger disowns ‘biased’ Reuters report]. When I read the original story, I thought to myself: “This never should have made it past a down-table sub’s desk. It is over-stretching – and to what end? To try to win space in the US online gutter?”
As Reuters strives above all to compete with each and every US media organisation, regardless of their political affiliations, we can expect to see more and more substandard stories such as this. It’s what you get when you abandon the course you have charted for 160 years and set anchor on Manhattan.
Nelson Graves
nbnbn
Is Reuters US-obsessed?
Sunday 11 September 2011
Perhaps Stephen Adler, in his thank you note after the storm, mentioned the coverage outside the US. In the portions of the note on The Baron, it was all US, except for a tip of the hat to editing desks in London and Asia. In any case, to field more photographers on this story than any other in recent memory says a lot about either Editorial's priorities or one's memory.
Nelson Graves
Stephen Adler's note dated Tuesday 30 August 2011 follows - Editor:
Colleagues:
As we continue to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, I wanted to thank all of the text and visuals staff and stringers who worked so hard in the field, in the affected bureaus and on the editing desks over the last several days to make our coverage a success. A story like this one that is important to so many of our clients and has multiple angles provides a great opportunity to showcase Reuters breadth and expertise – and we seized that opportunity from start to finish as the storm emerged in the Caribbean and churned its way up the East Coast.
Some of our journalists hunkered down near Irene’s path to chronicle the storm’s destruction. TV put out 23 live signals over three days, totaling more than 20 hours of live cover. We had more photographers in motion on this story than any other in recent memory. Text reported on the human impact of the story, the effects on power companies and their customers, the mass transit lockdown in New York City, the likely impact on Wall Street trading, the corporate winners and losers, the flooding across New Jersey and Vermont, and the costs to federal and state government, the economy and the insurance companies.
Staff in Miami, Washington, New York and Boston, tracked the storm’s path, reported on Irene’s effects locally, wrote our trunk stories, blogged for Reuters.com, edited and filed to our clients, and directed our coverage. Many spent the weekend in local hotels to ensure they could get to the office, some returning home later to deal with flooded basements. Other U.S. bureaus not directly involved in coverage and editing centers in London and Asia volunteered to help if necessary. And the editorial technical and facilities staff worked with us every step of the way to ensure we had what we needed to cover the story.
My thanks to all of you for your efforts and your strong performance.
Regards,
Steve
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Nelson Graves
Stephen Adler's note dated Tuesday 30 August 2011 follows - Editor:
Colleagues:
As we continue to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, I wanted to thank all of the text and visuals staff and stringers who worked so hard in the field, in the affected bureaus and on the editing desks over the last several days to make our coverage a success. A story like this one that is important to so many of our clients and has multiple angles provides a great opportunity to showcase Reuters breadth and expertise – and we seized that opportunity from start to finish as the storm emerged in the Caribbean and churned its way up the East Coast.
Some of our journalists hunkered down near Irene’s path to chronicle the storm’s destruction. TV put out 23 live signals over three days, totaling more than 20 hours of live cover. We had more photographers in motion on this story than any other in recent memory. Text reported on the human impact of the story, the effects on power companies and their customers, the mass transit lockdown in New York City, the likely impact on Wall Street trading, the corporate winners and losers, the flooding across New Jersey and Vermont, and the costs to federal and state government, the economy and the insurance companies.
Staff in Miami, Washington, New York and Boston, tracked the storm’s path, reported on Irene’s effects locally, wrote our trunk stories, blogged for Reuters.com, edited and filed to our clients, and directed our coverage. Many spent the weekend in local hotels to ensure they could get to the office, some returning home later to deal with flooded basements. Other U.S. bureaus not directly involved in coverage and editing centers in London and Asia volunteered to help if necessary. And the editorial technical and facilities staff worked with us every step of the way to ensure we had what we needed to cover the story.
My thanks to all of you for your efforts and your strong performance.
Regards,
Steve
nbnbn
Is Reuters US-obsessed?
Sunday 11 September 2011
Reuters may have become US obsessed, but Nelson Graves’ hurricane example does not make the point. Much of the hurricane coverage he questions was about the storm before it got to the US.
Jim Brumm
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Jim Brumm
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Is Reuters US-obsessed?
Friday 09 September 2011
Tell me I'm wrong: one appointment after another of senior journalists based for years on Manhattan or inside the Beltway. Breathless coverage of a hurricane that was, on a global scale, what the US East Coast’s 5.9 quake was to Japan’s 9.0 in March. Is Reuters US-obsessed?
Nelson Graves
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Nelson Graves
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Eikon
Tuesday 23 August 2011
At least one stand-alone Eikon terminal in each bureau “throughout” 2012 [● Disappearing headlines and other faults of flawed terminal]. Either Editorial is nowhere near first in line or this platform is simply not crucial for Thomson Reuters journalists. And if it’s not crucial to TR journalists why would it be crucial for clients? Little wonder that Devin Wenig is no longer in charge of Markets.
Nelson Graves
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Nelson Graves
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Thomson Reuters
Thursday 28 July 2011
The Thomson family is clearly not happy with the results of the Markets Division. They have fired the chief and key members of his team, and put the group CEO in charge. This shows there is no clear successor and the changes were made in relative haste. The Markets Division in many ways is exReuters – Glocer must be swallowing hard, and possibly looking afield. He probably has max one year to turn things around. Meanwhile, Editorial seems to be putting lots of eggs in the US media basket. Anyone's guess why. If I were an investor, I'd be worried. Hold on, I am an investor!
Nelson Graves
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Nelson Graves
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Playing in the Big Leagues (The newsonomics of Reuters' Americanisation)
Sunday 19 June 2011
My name is Matt Beagle III, and I come from Akron, Ohio. I’m an expert on the media by virtue of academic and professional training but also because I’ve devoured media content since I was old enough to read. Although I’ve never worked for The New York Times or The Washington Post, I’ve read them since I was a junior in high school and preparing to apply to colleges. Plus I have some friends who work for both of those papers and others at other major newspapers, magazines and television stations.
It’s no secret that the mainstream media are in crisis. Many of my friends in the media are out of jobs. Sometimes I feel a twinge of guilt when I realize I’m making a living off of writing about a dying industry, but somebody has to do it, and in the end I may help it resurrect itself.
It’s hard not to pine for the good old days. When I was in grade school, our media leaders were healthy, journalists had steady jobs and the public was happy. We had two newspapers in my home city, one that came out in the morning and the other in the afternoon. They took different editorial slants – one was Democratic, the other Republican – but they co-existed peacefully, and many families including ours took both papers. There was something reassuring about the slap of the paper as the delivery boy would hurl it onto our front porch.
We didn’t buy The New York Times back then except on Sundays. But the best columnists, the ones who set the policy agenda, were syndicated and carried by one or the other of our local newspapers. I was too young to read Walter Lippmann, but James Reston carried the banner after him and both were cut from the same cloth. In those days a citizen could trust the best columnists to tell them the truth and how to vote.
Something very fundamental changed when our town and many others lost one of their two newspapers. I consider it a watershed moment in our media history. I know many attribute it to the loss of industries that employed workers who were the traditional buyers of afternoon papers. To that extent, they were victims of structural changes in our economy. (Brought on by the Japanese and the Koreans, but that’s another story.) I wonder if the end of two-newspaper towns did not presage the de-intellectualization of our populace, or something like that.
TV was important but could co-exist with newspapers. There were three channels and for all intents and purposes each had but one national and one local news broadcast a day (no one watched at midday). All of them were good, although there was something more venerable about CBS and Walter Cronkite. NBC’s logo – a peacock – always bugged me, and ABC was an upstart. But as I said, they co-existed, and I don’t think they greatly harmed newspapers.
Of course all of that changed with cable television. Ever since cable, I have the feeling that we have lost control of our media. The breakup of AT&T meant the same for telecommunications. It was easier and things seemed a lot more stable when you had a heavy black phone with a rotary dial, a TV set with three channels (and maybe a Canadian station for hockey games) and newspapers with want ad sections, good sports sections and owners who cared about editorial quality and the bottom line.
So I actually saw our media industry heading downhill before the Internet, which has only hastened its demise. I call it the fragmentation of the media industry. Basically there are not enough people to support all of these media entities, and only the strong will survive. But of course people no longer demand the same quality, so there is no guarantee that the best journalism will win out.
On the other hand, I’m well aware that Facebook and Twitter cannot be ignored. They are very much on the playing field now. Politicians and corporations have understood that to reach the voter and consumer, you’ve got to use social media. I’m not a big user myself, but I recognize they can’t be ignored.
One of the ironies of the Rep. Weiner saga is that he fell on his own sword, so to speak. He had made good use of social media in his campaigning, and it was social media that brought him down. Life is full of ironies.
Now the other day I was reading The Wall Street Journal and I came across an interesting article. (I don’t read all of the Journal, but I know it’s something you have to pay attention to. I like the “What’s News” column, for example.) It talked about how the media company Thomson Reuters was making a major effort to crack the U.S. media market. Everyone knows that Reuters has been around for a long time but it’s not quite a household name in the U.S. In fact, finding someone who can pronounce Reuters properly (“Roy-ters”) is not easy, even on the East Coast, where I live.
I started looking into Thomson Reuters. I came across a couple of amazing facts which took me quite by surprise. First, it has 2,900 journalists. By my calculation, that’s more journalists than any other news organization in the world. I have no idea how there could be so many Reuters journalists and I’ve never met one of them.
Actually, that’s not true. I know quite a few of the new editorial managers in Reuters (you can drop “Thomson” when talking about the news side of the group) because many of them have worked in the past for such venerable media groups as The Wall Street Journal and Business Week. Reuters wants to succeed in the U.S. market, and so like the owners of a professional sports team, they are buying up existing talent who know how to play the game on U.S. soil.
The other amazing thing I discovered is that Thomson Reuters makes a great deal of money and that most of it comes from the financial sector. Media clients account for less than 5% of its revenues. So this is a news juggernaut that does not depend on fickle consumers and is not at the mercy of abrupt changes in the media market. It’s basically like Bloomberg, only older and it’s owner is not a mayor.
Still, it’s got to irk Thomson Reuters managers to be so big and yet so unknown in the most powerful country in the world. It’s understandable that they want to be part of the media elite in the United States and to be mentioned in the same breath as The New York Times and CNN. There’s nothing worse than having second-rate guests at the White House dinner.
But Reuters is going to have to get in the trenches with the rest of the media, and that’s not going to be easy. Where were they on the Anthony Weiner story – what I’ve dubbed the Battle of the Bulge? Were they first with the pictures? First with news that he would not step down? And first with news that he would? How many people re-Tweeted the Reuters Tweet?
Reuters might be big and strong, but if it’s not cited by Fox and CNN at the same time on the big breaking story of the day, it will never be a household name and its journalists will always labor in the shadows. There was only one Michael Jackson, for sure, but stories like his death are the meat and potatoes of the media market. Reuters better get ready for the next one. While it’s at it, it might want to look into talk that he never did die.
Nelson Graves
vbnbnbn
It’s no secret that the mainstream media are in crisis. Many of my friends in the media are out of jobs. Sometimes I feel a twinge of guilt when I realize I’m making a living off of writing about a dying industry, but somebody has to do it, and in the end I may help it resurrect itself.
It’s hard not to pine for the good old days. When I was in grade school, our media leaders were healthy, journalists had steady jobs and the public was happy. We had two newspapers in my home city, one that came out in the morning and the other in the afternoon. They took different editorial slants – one was Democratic, the other Republican – but they co-existed peacefully, and many families including ours took both papers. There was something reassuring about the slap of the paper as the delivery boy would hurl it onto our front porch.
We didn’t buy The New York Times back then except on Sundays. But the best columnists, the ones who set the policy agenda, were syndicated and carried by one or the other of our local newspapers. I was too young to read Walter Lippmann, but James Reston carried the banner after him and both were cut from the same cloth. In those days a citizen could trust the best columnists to tell them the truth and how to vote.
Something very fundamental changed when our town and many others lost one of their two newspapers. I consider it a watershed moment in our media history. I know many attribute it to the loss of industries that employed workers who were the traditional buyers of afternoon papers. To that extent, they were victims of structural changes in our economy. (Brought on by the Japanese and the Koreans, but that’s another story.) I wonder if the end of two-newspaper towns did not presage the de-intellectualization of our populace, or something like that.
TV was important but could co-exist with newspapers. There were three channels and for all intents and purposes each had but one national and one local news broadcast a day (no one watched at midday). All of them were good, although there was something more venerable about CBS and Walter Cronkite. NBC’s logo – a peacock – always bugged me, and ABC was an upstart. But as I said, they co-existed, and I don’t think they greatly harmed newspapers.
Of course all of that changed with cable television. Ever since cable, I have the feeling that we have lost control of our media. The breakup of AT&T meant the same for telecommunications. It was easier and things seemed a lot more stable when you had a heavy black phone with a rotary dial, a TV set with three channels (and maybe a Canadian station for hockey games) and newspapers with want ad sections, good sports sections and owners who cared about editorial quality and the bottom line.
So I actually saw our media industry heading downhill before the Internet, which has only hastened its demise. I call it the fragmentation of the media industry. Basically there are not enough people to support all of these media entities, and only the strong will survive. But of course people no longer demand the same quality, so there is no guarantee that the best journalism will win out.
On the other hand, I’m well aware that Facebook and Twitter cannot be ignored. They are very much on the playing field now. Politicians and corporations have understood that to reach the voter and consumer, you’ve got to use social media. I’m not a big user myself, but I recognize they can’t be ignored.
One of the ironies of the Rep. Weiner saga is that he fell on his own sword, so to speak. He had made good use of social media in his campaigning, and it was social media that brought him down. Life is full of ironies.
Now the other day I was reading The Wall Street Journal and I came across an interesting article. (I don’t read all of the Journal, but I know it’s something you have to pay attention to. I like the “What’s News” column, for example.) It talked about how the media company Thomson Reuters was making a major effort to crack the U.S. media market. Everyone knows that Reuters has been around for a long time but it’s not quite a household name in the U.S. In fact, finding someone who can pronounce Reuters properly (“Roy-ters”) is not easy, even on the East Coast, where I live.
I started looking into Thomson Reuters. I came across a couple of amazing facts which took me quite by surprise. First, it has 2,900 journalists. By my calculation, that’s more journalists than any other news organization in the world. I have no idea how there could be so many Reuters journalists and I’ve never met one of them.
Actually, that’s not true. I know quite a few of the new editorial managers in Reuters (you can drop “Thomson” when talking about the news side of the group) because many of them have worked in the past for such venerable media groups as The Wall Street Journal and Business Week. Reuters wants to succeed in the U.S. market, and so like the owners of a professional sports team, they are buying up existing talent who know how to play the game on U.S. soil.
The other amazing thing I discovered is that Thomson Reuters makes a great deal of money and that most of it comes from the financial sector. Media clients account for less than 5% of its revenues. So this is a news juggernaut that does not depend on fickle consumers and is not at the mercy of abrupt changes in the media market. It’s basically like Bloomberg, only older and it’s owner is not a mayor.
Still, it’s got to irk Thomson Reuters managers to be so big and yet so unknown in the most powerful country in the world. It’s understandable that they want to be part of the media elite in the United States and to be mentioned in the same breath as The New York Times and CNN. There’s nothing worse than having second-rate guests at the White House dinner.
But Reuters is going to have to get in the trenches with the rest of the media, and that’s not going to be easy. Where were they on the Anthony Weiner story – what I’ve dubbed the Battle of the Bulge? Were they first with the pictures? First with news that he would not step down? And first with news that he would? How many people re-Tweeted the Reuters Tweet?
Reuters might be big and strong, but if it’s not cited by Fox and CNN at the same time on the big breaking story of the day, it will never be a household name and its journalists will always labor in the shadows. There was only one Michael Jackson, for sure, but stories like his death are the meat and potatoes of the media market. Reuters better get ready for the next one. While it’s at it, it might want to look into talk that he never did die.
Nelson Graves
vbnbnbn
