Breakingviews
How to make money out of the Internet, by Hugo Dixon
Monday 25 January 2010
Hugo Dixon, who made more than £3 million out of the sale of his Breakingviews financial commentary website to Thomson Reuters, has some tips for those who want to make money from the Internet.
Thomson Reuters paid £12 million for the business, with £3 million of that sum covering Dixon's shares and options. A further retention bonus keeps him in place for another three years.
"You have got to have distinctive, value-added content and in an era of budget cuts that gets harder and harder," he said in an interview. "The temptation if you've got to cut costs by five per cent is just to salami slice and everyone works a bit harder and quality just deteriorates a little bit more. What you end up with when you finally decide to put it behind a paywall is something that's not good enough to persuade people to pay for."
Dixon, now global editor of the re-branded Reuters Breakingviews, says media groups have got to focus much more clearly on what is their unique selling point – "keep the investment there, possibly increase the investment there, and everything else, which may be necessary as part of a package, because a newspaper is a package, they don't have to produce themselves, they can buy that in," he told The Guardian. He says Rupert Murdoch should never be underestimated but he will have a tough time succeeding with a paywall for his newspaper sites in the UK given the free alternatives.
Prior to founding Breakingviews in 1999 Dixon was a correspondent, leader writer and an editor at the Financial Times. At 46 he is "a trim figure with an air of donnish abstraction about him, and a cerebral manner” The Guardian says, and “looks slightly out of place in the corridors of Reuters' glitzy Canary Wharf HQ. He and his US editor, Rob Cox, are the only survivors of Breakingviews' early days as a dotcom startup. With the bet finally paying off, Dixon can afford to dispense advice. But he is not, on the surface, given to self-doubt and former colleagues say he was not always emollient with those without such a high IQ.
"One former ally less pleased by the deal was Jonathan Ford, Breakingviews' co-founder and another ex-FT staffer. Having left the site in 2007 after the two men fell out, he was signed up the following year to run Reuters' fledgling commentary operation, a rival to Breakingviews. Reuters' decision to buy Dixon's business effectively put Ford out of a job, and unsurprisingly he left." Ford returned the FT last week chief leader writer.
The Reuters deal has allowed Breakingviews to beef up its offices in London and New York, add a second columnist in Hong Kong and Washington and another in Moscow and to seek columnists for Dubai, Mumbai, Tokyo and Frankfurt. It also has people in Paris and Madrid and syndicates columns to 15 newspapers including The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times and Le Monde. The 30-strong team of Reuters Breakviews columnists includes Neil Collins, former City editor of The Daily Telegraph and Peter Thal Larsen, former banking editor of the FT.
● SOURCE The Guardian
Thomson Reuters paid £12 million for the business, with £3 million of that sum covering Dixon's shares and options. A further retention bonus keeps him in place for another three years.
"You have got to have distinctive, value-added content and in an era of budget cuts that gets harder and harder," he said in an interview. "The temptation if you've got to cut costs by five per cent is just to salami slice and everyone works a bit harder and quality just deteriorates a little bit more. What you end up with when you finally decide to put it behind a paywall is something that's not good enough to persuade people to pay for."
Dixon, now global editor of the re-branded Reuters Breakingviews, says media groups have got to focus much more clearly on what is their unique selling point – "keep the investment there, possibly increase the investment there, and everything else, which may be necessary as part of a package, because a newspaper is a package, they don't have to produce themselves, they can buy that in," he told The Guardian. He says Rupert Murdoch should never be underestimated but he will have a tough time succeeding with a paywall for his newspaper sites in the UK given the free alternatives.
Prior to founding Breakingviews in 1999 Dixon was a correspondent, leader writer and an editor at the Financial Times. At 46 he is "a trim figure with an air of donnish abstraction about him, and a cerebral manner” The Guardian says, and “looks slightly out of place in the corridors of Reuters' glitzy Canary Wharf HQ. He and his US editor, Rob Cox, are the only survivors of Breakingviews' early days as a dotcom startup. With the bet finally paying off, Dixon can afford to dispense advice. But he is not, on the surface, given to self-doubt and former colleagues say he was not always emollient with those without such a high IQ.
"One former ally less pleased by the deal was Jonathan Ford, Breakingviews' co-founder and another ex-FT staffer. Having left the site in 2007 after the two men fell out, he was signed up the following year to run Reuters' fledgling commentary operation, a rival to Breakingviews. Reuters' decision to buy Dixon's business effectively put Ford out of a job, and unsurprisingly he left." Ford returned the FT last week chief leader writer.
The Reuters deal has allowed Breakingviews to beef up its offices in London and New York, add a second columnist in Hong Kong and Washington and another in Moscow and to seek columnists for Dubai, Mumbai, Tokyo and Frankfurt. It also has people in Paris and Madrid and syndicates columns to 15 newspapers including The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times and Le Monde. The 30-strong team of Reuters Breakviews columnists includes Neil Collins, former City editor of The Daily Telegraph and Peter Thal Larsen, former banking editor of the FT.
● SOURCE The Guardian
Thomson Reuters completes acquisition of Breakingviews
Tuesday 01 December 2009
Thomson Reuters said on Tuesday it had completed its acquisition of Breakingviews, a leading provider of online financial insight, positioning the newly combined commentary organisation as the global leader in point-of-view journalism for financial markets.
The output of the combined team of Reuters’ original commentary writers and the Breakingviews people will be known as Reuters Breakingviews to make a clear distinction between the news service and commentary offerings.
"A fundamental plank of our Editorial strategy for making Reuters the indispensable news service for the 21st century is to expand our traditional fact-based news coverage to also offer agenda-setting point-of-view journalism. I am confident we will build upon reputation and expertise from both Reuters and Breakingviews and leverage the expertise of the combined organization," said David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief.
The Reuters Breakingviews attribution will designate the commentary and opinion of the named authors, while Reuters will designate the expert sourced news and analysis that has moved markets and provided insight for more than 150 years.
Reuters Breakingviews has about 30 columnists based in London, New York, Hong Kong, Paris, Washington, Moscow and Madrid, with immediate plans for expanded coverage in the Gulf, Japan, Germany and India.
The newly combined service is available on all Thomson Reuters desktops with selected commentaries appearing on reuters.com. Reuters Breakingviews also reaches a broader audience of nearly 4.5 million investors and opinion formers via daily columns in many of the world's most influential newspapers, including The New York Times, Le Monde, The Daily Telegraph and the International Herald Tribune.
Hugo Dixon, editor, Reuters Breakingviews, who will be running the combined commentary team, said: "The enlarged team will have global reach, allowing us to react more rapidly to breaking news and cover more stories. We will also now be able to reach hundreds of thousands more influential readers through Thomson Reuters desktops."
Breakingviews was founded in 1999 to provide online financial commentary aimed at a professional audience. It is one of a handful of journalism websites to have successfully introduced a subscription model. The company also has a thriving syndication business.
● SOURCE Marketwire
The output of the combined team of Reuters’ original commentary writers and the Breakingviews people will be known as Reuters Breakingviews to make a clear distinction between the news service and commentary offerings.
"A fundamental plank of our Editorial strategy for making Reuters the indispensable news service for the 21st century is to expand our traditional fact-based news coverage to also offer agenda-setting point-of-view journalism. I am confident we will build upon reputation and expertise from both Reuters and Breakingviews and leverage the expertise of the combined organization," said David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief.
The Reuters Breakingviews attribution will designate the commentary and opinion of the named authors, while Reuters will designate the expert sourced news and analysis that has moved markets and provided insight for more than 150 years.
Reuters Breakingviews has about 30 columnists based in London, New York, Hong Kong, Paris, Washington, Moscow and Madrid, with immediate plans for expanded coverage in the Gulf, Japan, Germany and India.
The newly combined service is available on all Thomson Reuters desktops with selected commentaries appearing on reuters.com. Reuters Breakingviews also reaches a broader audience of nearly 4.5 million investors and opinion formers via daily columns in many of the world's most influential newspapers, including The New York Times, Le Monde, The Daily Telegraph and the International Herald Tribune.
Hugo Dixon, editor, Reuters Breakingviews, who will be running the combined commentary team, said: "The enlarged team will have global reach, allowing us to react more rapidly to breaking news and cover more stories. We will also now be able to reach hundreds of thousands more influential readers through Thomson Reuters desktops."
Breakingviews was founded in 1999 to provide online financial commentary aimed at a professional audience. It is one of a handful of journalism websites to have successfully introduced a subscription model. The company also has a thriving syndication business.
● SOURCE Marketwire
Thomson Reuters buys Breakingviews to boost comment
Wednesday 14 October 2009
The website will be incorporated into the Thomson Reuters feed for users of its teminals under the brand Reuters Breakingviews. It will also continue to supply commentary for newspapers such as The New York Times.
Thomson Reuters refused to disclose the purchase price but reports put it at around £13 million, giving its founder and largest shareholder, journalist Hugo Dixon, £2.6 million.
Dixon will run the enlarged service, which will operate separately from Reuters' news reports. He is bringing over 20 journalists and taking over the existing Reuters Comment operation. Thomson Reuters said it is talking to Jonathan Ford, Dixon’s former business partner who was hired last year to start the Reuters commentary service, about taking on other roles at Thomson Reuters.
The Breakingviews board has recommended that shareholders in the privately held company accept the offer, Thomson Reuters said, adding that the transaction should close within eight weeks.
The decision to buy Breakingviews pushes Reuters News further into the world of commenting on business and financial news, Reuters’ own report on the purchase said.
The separate stand-alone branding will allow Reuters to continue to ensure that there remains a clear distinction between its news service and commentary offering. "Breakingviews will continue to represent the commentary and opinion of the author, while Reuters reporting will continue to represent the traditional sourced news and analysis that has been its staple for more than 150 years," a Thomson Reuters press release said.
Reuters decided to buy Breakingviews even after starting its own service because the deal was at an attractive price and will accelerate the company's push into commentary, editor-in-chief David Schlesinger said.
He told the Financial Times that the new Reuters Breakingviews would combine the team built by Dixon since he founded the site in 1999 with Reuters’ similar-sized commentary team launched less than a year ago.
“Departures and reassignments” would lead to a combined team of “30-ish”, he said, without giving details of where cuts might fall. The combined service would continue with hiring plans in the Gulf, India and other parts of Asia, he added.
Reuters could have achieved its goals to expand in commentary “given enough time”, he said, but the acquisition allowed it to “short-circuit” the process.
“This is not a deal where we were buying revenue. This is a deal where we were buying [a] brand and people and capability,” he said. “My big worry has always been the commoditisation of factual news. There are many ways you can do to mitigate against that but [one is that] subscribers want facts and they want ideas.”
Dixon said the deal demonstrated “that high-quality financial commentary is extremely valuable.” It “should enhance the product as we’ll be plugged into a much bigger journalistic enterprise,” he said.
● SOURCE Reuters | Financial Times | The Times | Thomson Reuters
● Breakingviews
Bloomberg 'outbids Thomson Reuters' for BusinessWeek
Wednesday 14 October 2009
Dave was amazingly conscientious, and World Desk worries haunted him for years after his farewell drinks. He wrote in one email:
"I was most interested to hear about your Reuter nightmares: you might be comforted to know that mine (which usually dealt with crises developing when 1. I can't remember how to work the computers or the codes I need to send a story or 2. I'm alone on a desk after something terrible has happened and I don't know how to handle the flood of copy) have almost disappeared after nearly six years in retirement. I used to get these at least twice a week and would awake in a sense of terrible dread."
As night editor, his work wasn't really over at the end of the shift. Many of us benefited from his after-hours pastoral care. I'll always remember a session at Maggie's Tin Pan Alley in New York that ended shortly before dawn with Kevin Cooney sound asleep, his head resting on Dave's right shoulder. The silence at the bar was broken only when Dave murmured: "Poor Kev."
We have lost a dear friend, and I hope he would not mind my sharing his memory of a happier August day in Halifax, Nova Scotia:
"I recall visiting my parents shortly after my daughter's birth in 1970; my father and I sat outside on the lawn behind our house at Pine Hill on Francklyn Street overlooking the North West Arm on a balmy August afternoon. To this day I think of my father picking up a glass of chilled Chablis, staring into the distance and murmuring: 'Tough old life.' These words floated across my mind as I read of you sampling the champagnes in the Oyster Bar."
Graham Colville
"I was most interested to hear about your Reuter nightmares: you might be comforted to know that mine (which usually dealt with crises developing when 1. I can't remember how to work the computers or the codes I need to send a story or 2. I'm alone on a desk after something terrible has happened and I don't know how to handle the flood of copy) have almost disappeared after nearly six years in retirement. I used to get these at least twice a week and would awake in a sense of terrible dread."
As night editor, his work wasn't really over at the end of the shift. Many of us benefited from his after-hours pastoral care. I'll always remember a session at Maggie's Tin Pan Alley in New York that ended shortly before dawn with Kevin Cooney sound asleep, his head resting on Dave's right shoulder. The silence at the bar was broken only when Dave murmured: "Poor Kev."
We have lost a dear friend, and I hope he would not mind my sharing his memory of a happier August day in Halifax, Nova Scotia:
"I recall visiting my parents shortly after my daughter's birth in 1970; my father and I sat outside on the lawn behind our house at Pine Hill on Francklyn Street overlooking the North West Arm on a balmy August afternoon. To this day I think of my father picking up a glass of chilled Chablis, staring into the distance and murmuring: 'Tough old life.' These words floated across my mind as I read of you sampling the champagnes in the Oyster Bar."
Graham Colville
Thomson Reuters to buy breakingviews.com for £10m - report
Sunday 20 September 2009
Thomson Reuters is in advanced talks to buy ● breakingviews.com, an online financial analysis service, for £10 million, The Sunday Times reported.
The seller is Hugo Dixon, a former Financial Times journalist who is backed by more than 40 shareholders including The Wall Street Journal.
“Dixon, who ran the Financial Times's Lex column for five years, has been in talks with Thomson Reuters since July,” The Sunday Times said. “The £10m price tag was agreed in recent days, according to sources inside Thomson Reuters, which has been seeking to expand the commentary and analysis available on its global news network for more than a year.
“The media company has recruited a number of commentators, including Jonathan Ford, who co-founded Breakingviews with Dixon in 1999. Ford no longer has any shares in the business, having left in 2007.”
The Sunday Times said the Breakingviews operation is likely to be left as a separate entity, with its own branding. It has about 15,000 direct subscribers. Columns in a string of newspapers including The New York Times, Le Monde, El Pais and Handelsblatt, have increased its readership to an estimated 4.5 million. "It is profitable in Europe but continues to invest heavily in America and Asia.”
● SOURCE The Sunday Times
The seller is Hugo Dixon, a former Financial Times journalist who is backed by more than 40 shareholders including The Wall Street Journal.
“Dixon, who ran the Financial Times's Lex column for five years, has been in talks with Thomson Reuters since July,” The Sunday Times said. “The £10m price tag was agreed in recent days, according to sources inside Thomson Reuters, which has been seeking to expand the commentary and analysis available on its global news network for more than a year.
“The media company has recruited a number of commentators, including Jonathan Ford, who co-founded Breakingviews with Dixon in 1999. Ford no longer has any shares in the business, having left in 2007.”
The Sunday Times said the Breakingviews operation is likely to be left as a separate entity, with its own branding. It has about 15,000 direct subscribers. Columns in a string of newspapers including The New York Times, Le Monde, El Pais and Handelsblatt, have increased its readership to an estimated 4.5 million. "It is profitable in Europe but continues to invest heavily in America and Asia.”
● SOURCE The Sunday Times
Thomson Reuters discusses Breakingviews takeover
Tuesday 14 July 2009
Thomson Reuters is reported to be in preliminary discussions to acquire Breakingviews, the financial commentary web site.
Breakingviews is a privately held media company based in London. It has made no comment about the talks and a spokeswoman for Thomson Reuters declined to discuss the reports, saying the company did not comment on market rumours. But she did say “Thomson Reuters remains committed to its innovation agenda, which includes investments in news and commentary initiatives.”
Thomson Reuters began its own online financial commentary unit this year. New York-based Felix Salmon, who is leading the effort to produce a financial blog, does not think the company will buy Breakingviews.
“Needless to say, I have no first-hand, or even second-hand, knowledge of such matters – nobody tells me anything, and nor should they. But I can say that this smells of desperation on the part of Breaking Views, and I will also confidently predict that the deal is not going to happen,” he wrote in a Reuters blog.
“When I joined Reuters’s commentary group, it was clear to me that we were a Breakingviews killer: we were going to provide better commentary than they do, at the unbeatable price of $0.00. Reuters can afford to do that because journalism is always a loss center here: the profts come from terminal sales, and introducing a commentary service adds value to the terminals and makes them easier to sell.”
Breakingviews’ commentary is syndicated in several newspapers including The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph and Le Monde. It was founded in 2000 by two journalists who worked for the Financial Times’ Lex column, which produces similar commentary.
The company has only a small number of shareholders and is partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. by way of its acquisition of Dow Jones in 2007.
The discussions between Thomson Reuters and Breakingviews were reported by The Times and The New York Times.
● CLICK to read Felix Salmon’s full blog and comments on it.
● SOURCE The Times | The New York Times | Forbes
Breakingviews is a privately held media company based in London. It has made no comment about the talks and a spokeswoman for Thomson Reuters declined to discuss the reports, saying the company did not comment on market rumours. But she did say “Thomson Reuters remains committed to its innovation agenda, which includes investments in news and commentary initiatives.”
Thomson Reuters began its own online financial commentary unit this year. New York-based Felix Salmon, who is leading the effort to produce a financial blog, does not think the company will buy Breakingviews.
“Needless to say, I have no first-hand, or even second-hand, knowledge of such matters – nobody tells me anything, and nor should they. But I can say that this smells of desperation on the part of Breaking Views, and I will also confidently predict that the deal is not going to happen,” he wrote in a Reuters blog.
“When I joined Reuters’s commentary group, it was clear to me that we were a Breakingviews killer: we were going to provide better commentary than they do, at the unbeatable price of $0.00. Reuters can afford to do that because journalism is always a loss center here: the profts come from terminal sales, and introducing a commentary service adds value to the terminals and makes them easier to sell.”
Breakingviews’ commentary is syndicated in several newspapers including The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph and Le Monde. It was founded in 2000 by two journalists who worked for the Financial Times’ Lex column, which produces similar commentary.
The company has only a small number of shareholders and is partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. by way of its acquisition of Dow Jones in 2007.
The discussions between Thomson Reuters and Breakingviews were reported by The Times and The New York Times.
● CLICK to read Felix Salmon’s full blog and comments on it.
● SOURCE The Times | The New York Times | Forbes
Reuters hires three more columnists
Thursday 14 May 2009
Reuters announced three more appointments to its commentary team.
Agnes Crane, an editor at Dow Jones Newswires, Matthew Goldstein, a senior writer for BusinessWeek, and Christopher Swann from Bloomberg News are joining over the next three weeks as columnists based in New York.
The 25-member commentary team based primarily in London and New York will produce a blog.
The team will be led by Jonathan Ford, co-founder of Breakingviews. The European team will be led by Peter Thal Larsen, formerly banking editor of the Financial Times, and the US team will be led by Jeffrey Cane, formerly an editor at Portfolio.com and The New York Times.
"I am very excited to have a team of such talented financial journalists," said Cane. "They, along with our New York-based financial blogger, Felix Salmon, and our Washington blogger and columnist, James Pethokoukis, will greatly expand the ability of Reuters to offer smart, fact-based opinion on the big stories in the global financial markets."
● SOURCE PR News Wire
Agnes Crane, an editor at Dow Jones Newswires, Matthew Goldstein, a senior writer for BusinessWeek, and Christopher Swann from Bloomberg News are joining over the next three weeks as columnists based in New York.
The 25-member commentary team based primarily in London and New York will produce a blog.
The team will be led by Jonathan Ford, co-founder of Breakingviews. The European team will be led by Peter Thal Larsen, formerly banking editor of the Financial Times, and the US team will be led by Jeffrey Cane, formerly an editor at Portfolio.com and The New York Times.
"I am very excited to have a team of such talented financial journalists," said Cane. "They, along with our New York-based financial blogger, Felix Salmon, and our Washington blogger and columnist, James Pethokoukis, will greatly expand the ability of Reuters to offer smart, fact-based opinion on the big stories in the global financial markets."
● SOURCE PR News Wire
Reuters builds commentary team
Wednesday 29 April 2009
Reuters on Wednesday announced another appointment to its growing commentary team.
James Pethokoukis, a writer and blogger for U.S. News & World Report, will cover US economic policy, regulation and the economy in Washington. He is also a contributor to CNBC. Previously, he was with USA Today and Investor’s Business Daily. He will report to Jeffrey Cane, US editor, commentary, a former editor at Portfolio.com and The New York Times.
“The credit crisis has tilted the balance of US financial power away from New York and towards Washington, so the hiring of James Pethokoukis, who will cover the Capitol and its environs, is an essential plank in our plans to build a commentary team that will focus on the biggest stories in financial markets globally,” said Jonathan Ford, global commentary editor, who was previously co-founder of the Internet service Breakingviews. “James will post to our global financial blog and will also write longer columns on the evolving debate.”
Reuters’ 25-member commentary team of journalists is primarily based in London and New York. It produces short opinionated columns every day on the world’s top stories as well as longer columns.
The European commentary team will be led by Peter Thal Larsen, formerly banking editor of the Financial Times.
Felix Salmon, a financial blogger, is leading Reuters’ effort to produce a financial blog.
● SOURCE Thomson Reuters
James Pethokoukis, a writer and blogger for U.S. News & World Report, will cover US economic policy, regulation and the economy in Washington. He is also a contributor to CNBC. Previously, he was with USA Today and Investor’s Business Daily. He will report to Jeffrey Cane, US editor, commentary, a former editor at Portfolio.com and The New York Times.
“The credit crisis has tilted the balance of US financial power away from New York and towards Washington, so the hiring of James Pethokoukis, who will cover the Capitol and its environs, is an essential plank in our plans to build a commentary team that will focus on the biggest stories in financial markets globally,” said Jonathan Ford, global commentary editor, who was previously co-founder of the Internet service Breakingviews. “James will post to our global financial blog and will also write longer columns on the evolving debate.”
Reuters’ 25-member commentary team of journalists is primarily based in London and New York. It produces short opinionated columns every day on the world’s top stories as well as longer columns.
The European commentary team will be led by Peter Thal Larsen, formerly banking editor of the Financial Times.
Felix Salmon, a financial blogger, is leading Reuters’ effort to produce a financial blog.
● SOURCE Thomson Reuters
