Editor-in-Chief
David Schlesinger, former editor-in-chief, quits
Thursday 09 February 2012
“It has been a great ride, firstly in editorial and latterly with a tremendous China team – wonderful people, great experiences, amazing stories,” Schlesinger said.
Schlesinger, 51, joined Reuters in 1987 as a correspondent in Hong Kong. From 1989 to 1995 he managed Reuters editorial operations in Taiwan, China, and the Greater China region. He was appointed editor-in-chief in January 2007 after a spell as global managing editor. He became chairman, Thomson Reuters China, in February 2011 when Stephen Adler was appointed editor-in-chief.
“I loved being editor-in-chief; I’ve had a blast being Chairman, China; I’m happy to be able to end it like this,” he said.
Stephen Adler: We respect right to strike
Friday 03 February 2012
Reuters respects the right of journalists to strike, editor-in-chief Stephen Adler said after the National Union of Journalists called on its members to stop work for two days next week.
“We have been informed by the NUJ that approximately 150 of our staff members are being called upon to strike on Thursday 9 February and Friday 10 February. We regret to hear this and have put in place contingency plans to ensure that Reuters continues to deliver the quality journalism that our customers rely on during this period,” Adler said. “We respect the right of our colleagues to engage in this job action as part of the bargaining process and look forward to welcoming them back to work on their next work day.”
The stoppage is over a below-inflation pay offer. Some 83 per cent of NUJ members at Thomson Reuters voted in favour of strike action. The strike will be the first at Reuters in 25 years. It will start on the day that Thomson Reuters announces its 2011 and Q4 financial results.
● SOURCE The Guardian
“We have been informed by the NUJ that approximately 150 of our staff members are being called upon to strike on Thursday 9 February and Friday 10 February. We regret to hear this and have put in place contingency plans to ensure that Reuters continues to deliver the quality journalism that our customers rely on during this period,” Adler said. “We respect the right of our colleagues to engage in this job action as part of the bargaining process and look forward to welcoming them back to work on their next work day.”
The stoppage is over a below-inflation pay offer. Some 83 per cent of NUJ members at Thomson Reuters voted in favour of strike action. The strike will be the first at Reuters in 25 years. It will start on the day that Thomson Reuters announces its 2011 and Q4 financial results.
● SOURCE The Guardian
How Reuters beat Irene
Thursday 01 September 2011
Editor-in-chief Stephen Adler, thanking text, visuals staff and stringers for a strong performance, did not say how many photographers were out in the storm that shut down New York last weekend. The story provided a great opportunity to showcase Reuters’ breadth and expertise, he said.
“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.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Hacking scandal: Stephen Adler reminds staff about Trust Principles
Tuesday 19 July 2011
Reuters’ editor-in-chief Stephen Adler has reminded staff about the organisation’s Trust Principles and warned “we flirt with disaster” if they imagine the News Corporation phone hacking scandal “can’t happen here”.
The Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism alone do not offer protection against such ethical violations as occurred at the News of the World, he said in a memo to editorial staff. The memo also bore the name of Jim Gaines, Reuters’ ethics editor. Both men are relatively new to the company: Adler joined in 2010 and was appointed editor-in-chief in February 2011. Gaines joined in April from The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s digital paper for tablet computers, where he was managing editor.
“Every one of us has an obligation to push back when something seems wrong, even in the happy event that it may turn out to be right after all,” they said. “When the fairness, balance or integrity of our journalism is in question, we simply must ‘pipe up’ – to a colleague, a manager, or, if that doesn’t work, to one of us.”
Following is the full text of the memo:
The News Corp. scandal is not an occasion for self-satisfaction, at Reuters or anyplace else. That much should go without saying. Journalists everywhere have lost some of our innocence, again. However flagrant the ethical violations of News of the World, we flirt with disaster if we imagine it can’t happen here.
We are uniquely fortunate to have our Trust Principles, with their institutional protections for independence and integrity and their injunctions against bias and factional interest. We also have our Handbook, which exhorts us in specific ways to honor its “absolutes” of accuracy, transparency, rigorous sourcing and freedom from conflicts of interest. The Trust Principles and the Handbook have proven their uses in a thousand ways.
But they alone do not protect us. Every one of us has an obligation to push back when something seems wrong, even in the happy event that it may turn out to be right after all. When the fairness, balance or integrity of our journalism is in question, we simply must “pipe up” – to a colleague, a manager, or, if that doesn’t work, to one of us.
In a profession that requires us to pursue the truth wherever it leads us – whether into the teeth of controversy or cross-wise with authority and conventional wisdom – “this doesn’t seem ethical to me” may be the most important thing a journalist can say. We’re both happy to report that the evidence of our brief time here suggests this is widely understood at Reuters, but in the present circumstance it seemed to bear repeating.
Best regards,
Steve Adler and Jim Gaines
● SOURCE Reuters
● Trust Principles
● Handbook of Journalism
● Special Report - Inside Rebekah Brooks’ News of the World
Thomson Reuters unveils major editorial overhaul
Tuesday 19 April 2011
Stephen Adler, pictured, editor-in-chief since February, said he aims to raise Reuters’ profile, streamline decision-making, and better exploit the resources of the company created by the takeover of Reuters by Thomson three years ago.
A former Wall Street Journal editor who joined the company last year after leaving the top job at BusinessWeek magazine, he told staff in a memo: “My sole goal will be to make us the number one news provider in the world. I'm in favor of anything that helps get us there and against anything that gets in the way.”
In a news release, Adler said: “We must be second to none in speed, accuracy, relevance, and fairness, but also – and crucially – in enterprise, insight, analysis and originality.”
“News is central to what we do,” he told a Reuters reporter. “I think this structure enables us to concentrate on doing great journalism.”
The new structure, unveiled after a 60-day review, eliminates a layer of editorial bureaucracy in order to compete more effectively and streamline decision-making.
The new faces are
● Paul Ingrassia, former Dow Jones Newswires president and Pulitzer-prize winner who is appointed to the new position of deputy editor-in-chief. Based in New York, he will spend one week a month in London.
● Stuart Karle, the Journal’s former general counsel, becomes the news division's chief operating officer, a new position.
● Reginald Chua, former editor of the South China Morning Post and the Asian Wall Street Journal, becomes data editor.
● Jim Gaines, formerly managing editor at Time, Life and People magazines, will leave his job as managing editor of The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's digital paper for tablet computers, to join Thomson Reuters as ethics editor.
They are part of a New York-based executive team that also includes Chrystia Freeland, editor of Thomson Reuters Digital, who joined the company last year from the Financial Times; Amy Stevens, executive editor of professional news, who was deputy page-one editor of the Journal; and Adrian Dickson, global head, editorial products. Hugo Dixon continues as editor of Reuters Breakingviews and will remain in London.
As part of Adler’s effort to “tame the bureaucracy and clarify lines of authority,” the re-organisation eliminates roles such as global specialist editors who oversaw coverage of areas such as general and political news, and economic and companies reporting.
Adler’s announcement confirmed the departure of Betty Wong, global managing editor, after 21 years at Reuters.
He said the changes would help to achieve goals he outlined when he took over as editor-in-chief two months ago, namely:
● “To distinguish ourselves as the world's leading provider of news and insight;
● “To serve all Thomson Reuters customers across the divisions;
● “To create innovative digital offerings to showcase our work, brand, and values;
● “To tame bureaucracy and clarify lines of authority;
● “To develop a higher profile for our work;
● “To adhere enthusiastically to the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.”
“Separating content and operations is really the heart of this restructuring and will enable us to plan coverage in a more unified and coherent way while strengthening the operations that are designed to support and promote it,” he said.
In the new structure, the existing global managing editor job is divided between the chief operating officer, who will handle operations, support, and logistics; and the deputy editor-in-chief, who will oversee content creation in all media and absorb the responsibilities of global specialists editor as well.
Pictures and Television will continue to report to Mark Thompson. Reuters Insider will be led by Chris Cramer. Richard Mably will continue to lead commodities and energy on a global basis.
Adler said he was strongly committed to creating more attractive career paths for journalists who want to continue reporting and writing rather than become managers. “Eliminating the tier of global specialist editors will allow us to create senior reporting positions that will enhance our coverage in key areas. This is good for the staff and great for the file.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Major Reuters editorial shake-up to be unveiled
Friday 15 April 2011
The new editor-in-chief, Stephen Adler, is expected to announce the changes as soon as Monday. A former editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek magazine, now owned by Bloomberg, he replaced David Schlesinger as editor-in-chief in February. Adler said then he would spend the next 60 days evaluating news operations to determine what changes needed to be made to improve performance.
Talking Biz News, a website run by the Carolina Business News Initiative, said that according to three current employees, “those changes will largely focus on editing positions and are seen as Adler putting his stamp on the organisation”.
“When you look at the organisational chart, you see some editors with titles like managing editor of news research strategy for people you’ve never heard of and who are doing jobs similar to other positions at the company,” it quoted one editor as saying.
Talking Biz News said Adler has apparently been advised on the re-organisation by Stuart Karle, former general counsel for The Wall Street Journal.
It said one Reuters editor noted the company has three editor hierarchies – specialist editors such as those overseeing company coverage, stock market coverage, treasuries, commodities and other specialisations; bureau chiefs who oversee regional coverage; and a team of managing editors. There is also a group of editors called Top News. One of those levels is likely to be cut, said two staffers, with the reorganised editing team grouped under Top News editors.
Talking Biz News said the changes were foreshadowed in an e-mail sent to staff on Friday in which Amy Stevens, executive editor of the Thomson Reuters professional news operation, and Tiffany Wu, editor of company news in the Americas, referred to organisational and physical moves at Thomson Reuters’ headquarters in Times Square, New York.
Wong, one of the highest-ranking women in business journalism and the most prominent Asian woman in journalism, will formally leave the company at the end of May but is understood to have already gone. She deferred comment to Reuters PR staff but on her Facebook page wrote that, starting in June, she plans to begin work on a book about her great grandfather, a four-star general in Chiang Kai-shek’s army who was killed during the regime of Mao Tse-tung. A journalism graduate of New York University, she began her career at The Wall Street Journal in 1985 and joined Reuters in 1989, becoming managing editor and head of editorial operations in 2004 after a stint as global equities editor.
Adler spent 16 years at the Journal. He joined Reuters at the beginning of 2010 after Bloomberg acquired BusinessWeek.
● SOURCE Talking Biz News
Thomson Reuters names new editor-in-chief
Monday 07 February 2011
He is Stephen Adler, pictured, who joined the company a year ago from BusinessWeek where he was editor-in-chief. He left the magazine after it was purchased by Bloomberg. Adler replaces David Schlesinger who held the post since January 2007 and now returns to China to oversee group strategy in that country as chairman of Thomson Reuters China. The moves are effective immediately.
Chief executive Tom Glocer said the appointment of a relative outsider to the company’s top editorial job showed “not everything has to be invented here”.
Adler, 56, a former investigative editor at The Wall Street Journal and one-time editor of The American Lawyer, joined Thomson Reuters in January 2010 to set up dedicated news services for its legal, tax and accounting and healthcare and science divisions, fulfilling a goal set when Thomson acquired Reuters in April 2008. He is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School.
Glocer said Thomson Reuters’ fledgling professional news initiative, which employs 12 journalists, is “ready to be integrated into mother Reuters”.
Pointing to AOL’s acquisition of Huffington Post and The Daily Beast’s Newsweek deal, he added: “If you look at the outside world, there’s a need to accelerate change even in venerable and well-respected news organisations.”
“Journalistic excellence will continue to be our hallmark,” Adler said in a statement, “and our goal is to become a must-read among global professionals. To that end, we will continue to develop our extraordinary internal talent as well as hiring strategically from outside.”
He told the Financial Times his appointment to the new role of executive vice president of news for Thomson Reuters, reporting to the heads of both the markets and professional divisions, signalled a decision “to view Reuters News as an asset for the whole company”.
“There is going to be one news organisation to serve all the businesses,” Adler said. “The goal is to have a united news organisation.”
Glocer said: “My biggest hope and goal for him is we maximise the amount of time and resource that truly goes to journalistic excellence. Reuters developed its reputation when no one could do what we did. We should do that again.”
In a message to staff, Glocer said Adler would be a member of the executive committee and would report jointly to Devin Wenig and James Smith, chief executives of Thomson Reuters’ markets and professional divisions respectively. “This reporting relationship will help ensure that news will become a central asset for both divisions – the very heart of our company. Steve is the ideal choice to lead the next phase in the development of Reuters News as a core capability for Thomson Reuters.”
Schlesinger, 50, joined Reuters in 1987 as a correspondent in Hong Kong. He is a fluent Mandarin speaker and former head of Reuters’ editorial operations in China. “He’s far better known in China than I am,” Glocer said, adding that it would have taken him 20 years to build the same level of trust within a market where relationships matter were he just visiting twice a year from his New York head office.
Glocer said it was the perfect moment for Schlesinger to return to China in a senior strategic role to support the development of the group’s businesses in this key market. “David brings extraordinary passion and experience to this mission.”
He added: “Our news organisation is now poised to advance to new levels of excellence in an industry which is moving very fast. Please join me in thanking David for getting us here and supporting Steve as he takes us forward.”
● SOURCE Thomson Reuters | MarketWire
Mark Wood to head special-interest publisher in UK
Monday 23 August 2010
Wood became a non-executive director at Future in April 2009 but will step down from the board when he takes up his new post as UK chief executive at the end of August. He has held a number of part-time posts since September 2008 when he resigned from ITN, where he had been chief executive for nearly six years. Since 1998 Wood had been chairman of ITN, in which Thomson Reuters has a stake.
Wood joined Reuters in 1976 and was a correspondent in Vienna, East Berlin, Moscow and Bonn between 1977 and 1987. He was editor-in-chief from 1989 to 2000 when he took charge of Reuters strategic media investments and alliances as managing director of Reuters Content Partners.
Future's biggest-selling magazines include T3, Total Film, Digital Camera, Fast Car, Classic Rock, Guitar World, Official Xbox Magazine, Official Playstation Magazine, Nintendo Power, Maximum PC and MacLife.
● SOURCE The Guardian | Future
Mark Wood heads new Scottish news consortium
Monday 08 February 2010
The Scottish News Consortium comprises newspaper groups DC Thomson, the Herald & Times, Johnston Press, and Mentorn Scotland, a television producer.
"The consortium will transform the way television and broadband news is covered in Scotland and create a new model for partnership between newspapers and broadcasters," said Wood. "Our ground-breaking plans for a truly multiplatform and interactive TV/web news service and this is a dramatically new way of engaging Scottish viewers with national regional and community news."
Wood joined Reuters in 1976 and was a correspondent in Vienna, East Berlin, Moscow and Bonn. He was editor-in-chief from 1989 to 2000, then took charge of strategic media investments and alliances as director of Reuters Content Partners. After Reuters he was chief executive of Independent Television News from 2003 and also its chairman from 1998. He left ITN last year.
● SOURCE The Guardian
Brouhaha in the blogosphere over spiked story
Friday 08 January 2010
The manager, Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors, called Devin Wenig, CEO of the markets division that includes Reuters news agency, last month to complain about a story by reporters Matthew Goldstein and Svea Herbst-Bayliss who had been looking into allegations that Cohen engaged in insider trading in the 1980s.
The brouhaha has quickly been taken up in the blogosphere.
“Wenig passed Cohen's concerns onto Schlesinger, who put the kibosh on the story, raising question about what, precisely, the point of Reuters is if rich people can quash inconvenient stories with a phone call,” Manhattan media blog Gawker said.
Schlesinger said in a conference call with staff on Wednesday it was not a bad story and could have run. The call was tense, according to Gawker, which obtained a recording of it. Schlesinger faced down a string of angry and confused Reuters journalists demanding to know precisely why their boss spiked the story, it said.
During the conference call Schlesinger also fielded questions about contract negotiations with the Newspaper Guild of New York and the controversial redesign of the reuters.com website.
“To judge by the conference call, the Cohen episode has severely demoralized the wire service's staff, which was already preoccupied by bitter contract negotiations between its union members and management,” said another blog, Talking Biz News.
“Schlesinger acknowledged that Wenig had called him about the Cohen story, and that after reading it at Wenig's request, he told his deputy Jack Reerink that he had problems with it. But he denounced the ‘false blog stories’ accusing Reuters of caving to a wealthy hedge fund manager and insisted that his concerns had nothing to so with Cohen's complaint. And he lambasted his staffers for ‘running to a blog and spreading[ing] tittle-tattle’ … instead of raising concerns internally.
“Editors make judgments. You might not always agree with those judgments, and that’s fine,” Schlesinger said in the call. “If you disagree with those judgments, then come to me. Keep it within editorial, and don’t go running to a blog.”
At one point near the end of the call the editor-in-chief interrupted one staff member who said that his editorial judgment was on trial. ”My judgment is not on trial here,” he said, apologizing for losing his temper. “It was a question of judgment, and that judgment is not up for a vote or trial.”
Gawker reported: “When Reuters media reporter Robert MacMillan asked his boss what actually happened, and what was wrong with the story, Schlesinger immediately became testy, and bizarrely seemed to say that there wasn't anything wrong with it: ‘We're not going to do news editing by plebiscite...so I'm not going to go into the details of it. The story could have run. I mean, it was not a bad story. It could have run. But I had questions about it.’ Schlesinger said that the decision to kill it wasn't actually his — he raised his questions with Reerink, who made the ultimate decision: ‘I was actually in Tokyo. I said, look, it's up to you, I'm going to bed. He made a decision not to run it. That's it.’”
Schlesinger declined to explain his decision beyond saying “You obviously have a choice — you can either believe me or not. And if you don't believe me, fine. But I'm telling you that I was hired as an editor to make judgments. And I make those judgments free of pressure.”
Talking Biz News said Reerink, global company news editor, wrote a note to staff on Friday in which he mocked the blogs and said: “In the real world, we live by the trust principles. In the real world, we kick back stories for more reporting, balance or insight. In the real world, we don’t run every story just because we wrote it.
“Are we going to be right all the time? No. But we’ll try very hard. And we’ll learn from our mistakes. (and this was not a mistake, by the way).”
Talking Biz News published what it said was an e-mail sent by Schlesinger. It said: “There’s been blog chatter in the US this week that I spiked a story because Devin told me to after he got a call from the story’s putative subject. I know many of our journalists have been concerned by the reports and even wondered if they were true.
“Don’t believe them.
“We make decisions on stories for editorial and journalistic reasons only.
“Those decisions, by their nature, are judgement calls and you of course are always free to question the judgement or debate the issues. But never doubt the commitment of this company and of me to our Trust principles and journalistic ethics.
“In my three years as Editor-in-Chief (and in the three years before that when I was running editorial operations), neither Tom [Glocer, chief executive] nor Devin has ever asked me to kill a story or to run a story. I would have objected loudly if they had.”
● SOURCE Gawker | Talking Biz News | The Business Insider
Reuters website unveils bold new look to mixed reception
Friday 04 December 2009
For Reuters.com, the future is now, said David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief. “We want this to be the world’s best website covering business and finance news, analysis, and opinion. Full stop.”
In addition to a bolder logo – a red background replaces the washed-out grey look - the new website presents a less-cluttered home page and a slimmed-down toolbar offering a choice of News & Markets, Sectors & Industry and Analysis & Opinion, with a long list of topic sections under each. The site looks leaner, cleaner, brighter and more inviting.
“This site is for you; we want it to be your ticket to a wealth of news, information, and analysis presented in a cutting-edge format, including text, video, pictures, graphics, user interaction, and personalization features (try the new toolbar at the bottom of every page),” Schlesinger said.
But many respondents to Schlesinger’s message damned the facelift and some said they would be looking elsewhere for their news.
Schlesinger responded: “Wow - it’s great to read the passion of some of these comments, even when they hate what we’re doing! I feel really gratified that people take Reuters so seriously and are moved to write when we make changes.
“To those who love the new site – thanks, and we promise to continue to make it better and easier to use. And from the editorial side, we promise to continue to improve the multimedia content to make this a compelling experience.
“To those who hate the new site – thanks to you, too. I understand that your views are motivated by your loyalty to the old design and for how it served you. I can simply promise you that we’ll work to make this new design live up to its potential. I would urge you to experience with what we’ve got – I personally find the pop out market displays and the pop down menus, all filled with information, to be pretty exciting and useful.”
Alisa Bowen, Thomson Reuters’ head of consumer publishing, said: “We’ve only been in consumer publishing for the past six years, and the old version of the site reflected that. The new site reflects all the assets that were brought together with Thomson’s acquisition of Reuters in the spring of ‘08. We regard this as more than just a facelift.”
Redesigned websites in the UK, India, Japan and China as well as 13 additional local language markets will follow next year.
● SOURCE Reuters | David Schlesinger
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
Mark Wood to head health and fitness TV station
Sunday 29 November 2009
Mark Wood, former Reuters editor-in-chief, is to become chairman of a pan-European satellite TV station dedicated to health and fitness, The Sunday Times reported.
Wood, editor-in-chief from 1989 to 2000, moves to Body in Balance, which began in 2006 as Alfra, a German television company. Alfra merged with its main programme supplier, Fiton TV, in 2007 to former Body in Balance. Its programmes focus on disciplines including pilates and yoga.
Wood joined Reuters in 1976 and was a correspondent in Vienna, East Berlin, Moscow and Bonn. In 2000 he took charge of Reuters’ strategic media investments and alliances. After Reuters he was chief executive of Independent Television News from 2003 and also its chairman from 1998. He left ITN earlier this year.
● SOURCE The Sunday Times
Wood, editor-in-chief from 1989 to 2000, moves to Body in Balance, which began in 2006 as Alfra, a German television company. Alfra merged with its main programme supplier, Fiton TV, in 2007 to former Body in Balance. Its programmes focus on disciplines including pilates and yoga.
Wood joined Reuters in 1976 and was a correspondent in Vienna, East Berlin, Moscow and Bonn. In 2000 he took charge of Reuters’ strategic media investments and alliances. After Reuters he was chief executive of Independent Television News from 2003 and also its chairman from 1998. He left ITN earlier this year.
● SOURCE The Sunday Times
Important lessons learned from financial turmoil - David Schlesinger
Friday 09 October 2009
“One lesson was that our standards needed to be constantly examined and sometimes strengthened. Another is that transparency is rewarded by trust.”
The media industry was in its own crisis at the same time as it was reporting on the financial downturn, Schlesinger said in a speech.
“Our sources and our readers were in crisis, too, and this meant that our stories were watched extremely carefully and people were quick to complain about anything they didn’t like.
“I am proud that most of our reporting was excellent, but those times when we didn’t get it right it was vital to correct our errors swiftly and publicly.
“Maintaining our trust with our audience is fundamental to our mission as a news service. Reporting truthfully, reporting accurately, correcting errors, obeying our standards are all vital and can’t be compromised, especially not in the heat of a major and complex story.”
This year Reuters put its entire 500+ page ● Handbook of Journalism free online for anyone and everyone to read and comment on.
“We welcome that scrutiny from around the world. Where our standards are good and we live up to them, we want the attendant praise. Where we need to improve, or where we fail to live up to our ideals, we want the criticism. That should be the attitude that we in the media should strive for.”
Schlesinger was speaking at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on transparency and the role of media in China. The occasion was a World Media Summit hosted by Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The increasing internationalisation of financial markets has at least two dimensions relevant to financial information in China, he said. First, Chinese markets participants and investors need to be efficiently informed about foreign markets, while second, their non-Chinese counterparts overseas need to be efficiently informed about China. Mutual benefit and success depend upon this reciprocal relationship.
“I believe journalism at its best is a mirror, exposing back to society a true and brutally honest picture of what is going on,” Schlesinger said.
“When we fail at that, when our picture is not clear or at all distorted, we deserve to be criticised. We must strive to be that perfect mirror. But for societies and economies to truly work, to be effective and to be healthy, they need to look into that mirror unflinchingly and honestly.
“That is where the virtue of transparency comes in. That is why companies and government departments and government officials need to be ready to be open. That is why they need to take interviews and to reveal figures. That is why the instinct for secrecy needs to be resisted. That is why all involved need to help the media help society, by accepting that while openness, transparency and accountability may lead to momentary discomfort and sometimes embarrassment, they are ultimately worthwhile and, in fact, are a precondition to a truly healthy, stable and successful system.
“Similarly, a commitment to these practices is also a precondition for China’s development of healthy, sound and internationally competitive financial markets that protect domestic investors and encourage foreign investors to place their capital.”
Schlesinger, a former bureau chief in Beijing (1991-1994), added: “As Chinese financial journalism professionalises further, I look forward to mutually beneficial competition. I also look forward to Chinese nationals having full careers within foreign media organisations in China. My fervent wish is that one day soon Reuters financial news editor in China will be a Chinese national – one step on that person’s path to be global editor-in-chief!”
● SOURCE Reuters
● Reuters Handbook of Journalism
David Schlesinger joins debate over links to Reuters stories
Friday 07 August 2009
Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger has weighed in on a public debate over links to Reuters stories on the Internet. His take: it’s about being part of the conversation, adding to the debate rather than just playing postman and passing on others’ views, adding value, and getting rewarded for adding value.
“As head of a journalistic army of 2,700 professionals I obviously have an intense vested interest in ensuring that their work is valuable to readers and valued by them,” Schlesinger said in a Reuters blog posting.
“Part of that involves ensuring that they are in the centre of the action and that they fill their reports with their expertise and experience. Part of that involves ensuring that they are part of the debate, that their reports inform the debate and that the debate, in turn, informs their future reporting.
“Our standards on sourcing have always emphasized the importance of giving proper credit, even when quoting from competitors. And, of course, we expect the same in return.”
Schlesinger said that in the writing Reuters does specifically for the web “we’re as open to outbound linking as we are to the inbound”. But much of its other writing does not currently use outbound links “because of the particular ecosystem of our professional products, for which a lot of it is specifically written.” But he is sure that will change over time.
“The real danger in not being extremely open to linking, it seems to me, is that by moving yourself out of the mainstream debate you risk irrelevancy.
The fact that today the crediting can be done with a hyperlink is to me intellectually no different than the use of an academic footnote or a traditional journalistic “…according to XYZ in an interview”. It’s just better, because it’s fast, direct and creates an instant chain of knowledge.
“What’s more interesting to me is what one does with the link, not the link itself.
Schlesinger added: “I have a passing interest in the link or retweet that simply passes a nugget along.
“I have a bit more interest when the linker or retweeter extracts real gold that was hidden in the original and gives it more prominence.
“I have a lot more interest when the link or retweet uses the original as a jumping off point for argument, debate, or development.
“That’s when it gets interesting.”
● SOURCE Reuters
“As head of a journalistic army of 2,700 professionals I obviously have an intense vested interest in ensuring that their work is valuable to readers and valued by them,” Schlesinger said in a Reuters blog posting.
“Part of that involves ensuring that they are in the centre of the action and that they fill their reports with their expertise and experience. Part of that involves ensuring that they are part of the debate, that their reports inform the debate and that the debate, in turn, informs their future reporting.
“Our standards on sourcing have always emphasized the importance of giving proper credit, even when quoting from competitors. And, of course, we expect the same in return.”
Schlesinger said that in the writing Reuters does specifically for the web “we’re as open to outbound linking as we are to the inbound”. But much of its other writing does not currently use outbound links “because of the particular ecosystem of our professional products, for which a lot of it is specifically written.” But he is sure that will change over time.
“The real danger in not being extremely open to linking, it seems to me, is that by moving yourself out of the mainstream debate you risk irrelevancy.
The fact that today the crediting can be done with a hyperlink is to me intellectually no different than the use of an academic footnote or a traditional journalistic “…according to XYZ in an interview”. It’s just better, because it’s fast, direct and creates an instant chain of knowledge.
“What’s more interesting to me is what one does with the link, not the link itself.
Schlesinger added: “I have a passing interest in the link or retweet that simply passes a nugget along.
“I have a bit more interest when the linker or retweeter extracts real gold that was hidden in the original and gives it more prominence.
“I have a lot more interest when the link or retweet uses the original as a jumping off point for argument, debate, or development.
“That’s when it gets interesting.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters' complete Handbook of Journalism goes online
Thursday 09 July 2009
“The handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by — and we’re proud of it,” wrote Dean Wright, global editor, ethics, innovation and news standards (pictured).
“Until now, it hasn’t been freely available to the public. In the early 1990s, a printed handbook was published and in 2006 the Reuters Foundation published a relatively short PDF online that gave some basic guidance to reporters. But it’s only now that we’re putting the full handbook online.”
Wright said the handbook is being made available to everyone for a number of reasons. Among them:
● Transparency: At a time when trust is an endangered commodity in the financial and media worlds, it’s important that news consumers see the guidelines our journalists follow.
● Service: As we’ve seen over the past decade, the barriers to publishing have dropped so that anyone with an idea and a computer can be a publisher. But it’s also become clear that publishers have a varying standard of truth, fairness and style. Our handbook is a good place for budding journalists to begin.
● Geography: Reuters serves a global audience and the handbook recognises the cultural and political differences that our journalists face in reporting for the world. This is a handbook not just for English-language journalists in the United Kingdom or the United States, but for wherever English is used.
In the contest between UK and US English, “We take a global approach to the spelling of many words. Often, it’s the United States against the world.”
The sports section of the handbook offers a list of cliches to avoid and advice on “good, bad”: “For financial and commodity markets good news and bad news depends on who you are and what your position is in the market. Avoid them.”
One of the most controversial entries is that of “terrorism.” It reads, in part: “We may refer without attribution to terrorism and counter-terrorism in general but do not refer to specific events as terrorism. Nor do we use the adjective word terrorist without attribution to qualify specific individuals, groups or events. … Report the subjects of news stories objectively, their actions, identity and background. Aim for a dispassionate use of language so that individuals, organisations and governments can make their own judgment on the basis of facts. Seek to use more specific terms like “bomber” or “bombing”, “hijacker” or “hijacking”, “attacker” or “attacks”, “gunman” or “gunmen” etc.”
This policy has been passionately debated inside and outside Reuters, Wright said. As the handbook says, “we aim for dispassionate language” so that our customers can “make their own judgment on the basis of facts.”
Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger puts it this way: “Over the years we have been criticised for this policy on numerous occasions, when people or governments wanted us to label an incident ourselves rather than quote their views. Criticism of our policy was especially fierce when the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Reuters made the decision not to describe the attackers as terrorists, because we thought a label would not add to our vivid description of the thousands of deaths and the destruction of the iconic twin towers of the World Trade Center. In the years since, as the world has witnessed numerous other attacks, we’ve chosen to continue that policy of sticking with the facts and letting our readers make up their own minds based on our reporting and the evidence we present them.”
Wright added: “It’s important to point out that the handbook is a living document, one that preserves rules that have guided Reuters journalists through a century and half but also one that may change when the times change. It’s also important to note that the handbook is produced by humans who aren’t infallible — and it’s used by humans who aren’t infallible, so sometimes we make mistakes. I’m sure you’ll let us know when we do, but we’re usually harder on ourselves than anyone else is.”
● SOURCE Reuters | Handbook of Journalism
David Schlesinger on journalism in the age of Twitter
Wednesday 24 June 2009
In the future, old media won’t control news dissemination. Newspapers, magazines and news services won’t die. But they must change.
The only way for news organisations like Reuters to survive is to embrace the change and embrace the new. “Longing for the ways of the past will not work.”
Schlesinger was speaking to the International Olympics Committee Press Commission on Tuesday. His speech was posted on the Reuters Editors’ blog (click on the link below to read the full text).
“I spend my days at Reuters preaching the multimedia gospel to my 2,700 journalists,” he said.
“I want people to think holistically. I need them to. More and more, we’re issuing a multimedia report to multimedia-savvy consumers who no longer make a distinction between information they receive from text and information they receive from images. They demand words and pictures to be blended because… well, because that’s the way the world is! That’s the way the internet is. That’s the way schools work. That’s the way businesses work.
“So that’s my gospel – to bring multimedia to life at Reuters.”
In the face of “citizen journalism” using new social media tools, “what can we do to survive, or more fundamentally, to stay relevant?
“I think the only path is to embrace the change and embrace the new. Longing for the ways of the past will not work,” Schlesinger said.
“We in the traditional media and you in the IOC must concentrate our efforts on defining and developing that which really adds value.
“That means understanding what really can be exclusive and what really is insightful. It means truly exploiting real expertise.”
It means using all the multimedia tools available and all the smart multimedia journalists to provide a package so much stronger than any one individual strand, Schlesinger said.
It means working with the mobile phone and digital camera and social media-enabled public and not against them.
While old distinctions and old definitions are falling, “Our goal has to be to preserve the institutions and not the rules or definitions.
“And the way to do that is to evolve and morph and develop faster than the changes all around us.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Mark Wood joins board of Future Publishing
Wednesday 01 April 2009
Mark Wood, former Reuters editor-in-chief, joined Future Publishing on Wednesday as an independent non-executive director, The Guardian reported.
Wood, editor-in-chief from 1989 to 2000, was chief executive of ITN from 2003. He was also its chairman from 1998.
Future Publishing’s magazine titles include Total Film.
● SOURCE The Guardian
Wood, editor-in-chief from 1989 to 2000, was chief executive of ITN from 2003. He was also its chairman from 1998.
Future Publishing’s magazine titles include Total Film.
● SOURCE The Guardian
Former EiC Mark Wood to leave ITN
Monday 29 September 2008
Reuters’ former editor-in-chief Mark Wood is to step down as chief executive of Britain’s Independent Television News. He will leave early next year to “pursue opportunities outside the company”, The Guardian reported, although ITN said he would remain in his dual role of ITN chairman “for a period”.
Wood ran Reuters’ global news and television operations as editor-in-chief from 1989 to 2000. He then took charge of strategic media investments and alliances as director of Reuters Content Partners.
He joined Reuters in 1976 and was a correspondent in Vienna, East Berlin, Moscow and Bonn. He became ITN’s CEO in June 2003 and chairman in July 1998.
Thomson Reuters is a part owner of ITN.
● SOURCE The Guardian
Wood ran Reuters’ global news and television operations as editor-in-chief from 1989 to 2000. He then took charge of strategic media investments and alliances as director of Reuters Content Partners.
He joined Reuters in 1976 and was a correspondent in Vienna, East Berlin, Moscow and Bonn. He became ITN’s CEO in June 2003 and chairman in July 1998.
Thomson Reuters is a part owner of ITN.
● SOURCE The Guardian
