Editorial
Reuters executives deny ‘Pulitzer pursuit’ report
Wednesday 04 April 2012
Reuters executives have denied a report that the agency was adopting a new editorial approach aimed at winning Pulitzer Prizes.
The 23 February ● report on The Baron said European chief correspondents had been told about the new approach and other editorial matters at a briefing in London. It said: “Reuters is adopting a new editorial approach aimed at winning Pulitzer Prizes: long, in-depth, investigative special reports from all bureaux.” The report was based on accounts of the briefing by participants.
The Newspaper Guild of New York, a union which represents 430 Thomson Reuters employees, picked up the report on 7 March in its online publication Common Sense under the heading “Pulitzer Prize Pursuit”.
The denial was made to the Guild by Stuart Karle, chief operating officer for Reuters news, and Paul Ingrassia, deputy editor-in-chief. Both vigorously denied the report, the Guild said on Tuesday. “Karle and Ingrassia called the idea ‘stupid,’ with Ingrassia adding that it would be foolish to make Pulitzer Prizes a goal, given the slight chance of winning one,” it said. The Guild quoted Karle as saying the report was factually incorrect and based on a flawed premise. He said managers had gone through the list of journalism prizes to weed out those with a “corporate mission”. “You do this stuff (quality journalism) because it’s a good in itself,” he said. “It’s explicitly not a goal to win prizes.”
The Guild said neither Karle nor Ingrassia categorically denied what it called a more troubling aspect of The Baron report: the notion that the pace of staff turnover is too slow “for new and better people to be brought in quickly enough.” When asked about that, both said they had received reports of journalists “underperforming” and “not pulling their weight,” but said their main objective is to improve performance.
“Separately, the Guild has heard from numerous sources since last year that the Adler administration wants to use the performance management system to ‘manage out’ veteran journalists to make way for ‘stars’ picked by the new team,” it said. “This is a serious concern, given the parlous nature of the performance management system and the new contract language that performance management cannot be used in discipline. The Guild has already filed two grievances on issues related to this, including one that is scheduled for an arbitration hearing, and we’re continuing to monitor management’s actions closely.”
The Baron stands by its story.
● SOURCE The Newspaper Guild of New York
The 23 February ● report on The Baron said European chief correspondents had been told about the new approach and other editorial matters at a briefing in London. It said: “Reuters is adopting a new editorial approach aimed at winning Pulitzer Prizes: long, in-depth, investigative special reports from all bureaux.” The report was based on accounts of the briefing by participants.
The Newspaper Guild of New York, a union which represents 430 Thomson Reuters employees, picked up the report on 7 March in its online publication Common Sense under the heading “Pulitzer Prize Pursuit”.
The denial was made to the Guild by Stuart Karle, chief operating officer for Reuters news, and Paul Ingrassia, deputy editor-in-chief. Both vigorously denied the report, the Guild said on Tuesday. “Karle and Ingrassia called the idea ‘stupid,’ with Ingrassia adding that it would be foolish to make Pulitzer Prizes a goal, given the slight chance of winning one,” it said. The Guild quoted Karle as saying the report was factually incorrect and based on a flawed premise. He said managers had gone through the list of journalism prizes to weed out those with a “corporate mission”. “You do this stuff (quality journalism) because it’s a good in itself,” he said. “It’s explicitly not a goal to win prizes.”
The Guild said neither Karle nor Ingrassia categorically denied what it called a more troubling aspect of The Baron report: the notion that the pace of staff turnover is too slow “for new and better people to be brought in quickly enough.” When asked about that, both said they had received reports of journalists “underperforming” and “not pulling their weight,” but said their main objective is to improve performance.
“Separately, the Guild has heard from numerous sources since last year that the Adler administration wants to use the performance management system to ‘manage out’ veteran journalists to make way for ‘stars’ picked by the new team,” it said. “This is a serious concern, given the parlous nature of the performance management system and the new contract language that performance management cannot be used in discipline. The Guild has already filed two grievances on issues related to this, including one that is scheduled for an arbitration hearing, and we’re continuing to monitor management’s actions closely.”
The Baron stands by its story.
● SOURCE The Newspaper Guild of New York
‘Nasty nocturnal shifts’ go as Reuters merges regional desks
Sunday 01 April 2012
Reuters unifies its regional editing desks on Monday with the aim of raising the quality of its journalism and reinforcing the checks and balances of the ● Trust Principles. As part of the consolidation, overnight staffing in London and Washington is abolished for all but the biggest stories.
“Note: we aren’t eliminating jobs, just most of the nasty nocturnal shifts,” Paul Ingrassia, deputy editor-in-chief, said in a message to staff ahead of the change. The London desk will open at 6:00 am London time year-round.
The London and New York desks will handle each other’s overnight copy from the Americas and Europe, the Middle East & Africa and monitor broadcast and online media across the Atlantic for breaking news.
Reporting lines are reorganised to bring all desk staff under three newly-appointed heads of desk – Matthew Tostevin in London, Ciro Scotti in New York and Jean Yoon in Singapore. A new desk has been launched in Sydney. The heads of desk will coordinate teams of specialist chief desk editors. Reporters will file copy to just two baskets – Money, Politics & General News, and Companies & Commodities – but these will not be in place from day one.
“Our goals are to raise the bar for copy editing, rewrite and headlines and become the most vibrant desk operation in the business. We want the desk to offer a career path rich in opportunity,” Ingrassia said. “One of the most exciting changes is the creation of multimedia ‘hubs’ in each region – a cluster of desks where the regional text editor and her/his deputies will sit with journalists from our pictures, video, online and graphics operations. The aim is to foster greater collaboration across the teams and generate richer multimedia packages for our professional and consumer products. You’ll soon see these hubs start to take shape in London, Singapore and New York.
“Together, these moves will create a strong, independent desk that elevates the quality of our journalism and reinforces the checks and balances of the Trust Principles.”
● SOURCE Reuters
“Note: we aren’t eliminating jobs, just most of the nasty nocturnal shifts,” Paul Ingrassia, deputy editor-in-chief, said in a message to staff ahead of the change. The London desk will open at 6:00 am London time year-round.
The London and New York desks will handle each other’s overnight copy from the Americas and Europe, the Middle East & Africa and monitor broadcast and online media across the Atlantic for breaking news.
Reporting lines are reorganised to bring all desk staff under three newly-appointed heads of desk – Matthew Tostevin in London, Ciro Scotti in New York and Jean Yoon in Singapore. A new desk has been launched in Sydney. The heads of desk will coordinate teams of specialist chief desk editors. Reporters will file copy to just two baskets – Money, Politics & General News, and Companies & Commodities – but these will not be in place from day one.
“Our goals are to raise the bar for copy editing, rewrite and headlines and become the most vibrant desk operation in the business. We want the desk to offer a career path rich in opportunity,” Ingrassia said. “One of the most exciting changes is the creation of multimedia ‘hubs’ in each region – a cluster of desks where the regional text editor and her/his deputies will sit with journalists from our pictures, video, online and graphics operations. The aim is to foster greater collaboration across the teams and generate richer multimedia packages for our professional and consumer products. You’ll soon see these hubs start to take shape in London, Singapore and New York.
“Together, these moves will create a strong, independent desk that elevates the quality of our journalism and reinforces the checks and balances of the Trust Principles.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters shuffles general manager group
Thursday 08 March 2012
Stuart Karle, chief operating officer of Reuters news, has shuffled the agency’s general manager group, whose role is to make sure journalists have the best available support and resources to do their jobs safely and effectively, and to represent Reuters within the company and around the world.
In Asia, Abi Sekimitsu, who has recently directed the editorial operation in Japan, takes over as general manager, Southeast Asia & the Pacific. She will be responsible for Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.
“We’ve taken a different approach in South Asia, which Duncan Pitcairn recently left to become general manager video based in New York,” Karle said in a note to staff. Christina Pantin will take over as general manager South Asia in addition to her duties as general manager, Bangalore, and so will be supervising operation and logistics, as well as coordinating editorial’s partnership with the teams from human resources, public relations, legal, real estate and facilities, finance and security.
“To take further advantage of Caroline Drees’ expertise in handling safety and security issues, she will be responsible for those issues in South Asia while continuing in her role as general manager Middle East and Africa,” Karle said.
Marius Bosch, bureau chief Southern Africa, is the new deputy general manager for the Middle East and Africa.
● SOURCE Reuters
In Asia, Abi Sekimitsu, who has recently directed the editorial operation in Japan, takes over as general manager, Southeast Asia & the Pacific. She will be responsible for Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.
“We’ve taken a different approach in South Asia, which Duncan Pitcairn recently left to become general manager video based in New York,” Karle said in a note to staff. Christina Pantin will take over as general manager South Asia in addition to her duties as general manager, Bangalore, and so will be supervising operation and logistics, as well as coordinating editorial’s partnership with the teams from human resources, public relations, legal, real estate and facilities, finance and security.
“To take further advantage of Caroline Drees’ expertise in handling safety and security issues, she will be responsible for those issues in South Asia while continuing in her role as general manager Middle East and Africa,” Karle said.
Marius Bosch, bureau chief Southern Africa, is the new deputy general manager for the Middle East and Africa.
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters prepares to bury Coyote
Wednesday 07 March 2012
“This will benefit us all because the news data contained in Sys77 is completely stale,” said Stuart Karle, chief operating officer for Reuters news agency. “We can move swiftly on this because even after Sys77 disappears, we will still have back-up editorial systems to support Lynx Editor,” he said in a note to editorial staff.
The shutdown will begin in Asia, where the Singapore node of Coyote will be shut down on 17 March. In the rest of the world, the shutdown will be on 16 June.
“We understand that this is a big change for people who have had Coyote or Decade on their desktops since they joined Reuters, but we are ready to move forward with the Lynx suite of editorial tools, which we can use to enhance our stories in ways that the old system simply could not manage,” Karle added.
He invited ideas for “a suitable burial ceremony for this system, which has served Reuters well over more years than anyone ever expected”.
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters UK journalists accept new pay offer, call off strike
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Reuters journalists in Britain called off plans to strike hours before a midnight deadline after accepting an improved pay offer on Wednesday.
London-based members of the National Union of Journalists voted to accept a three per cent pay increase offered by Thomson Reuters with a raise of at least 2.5 per cent guaranteed for all journalists and the rest dependent on individual performance.
Union members last week rejected an offer of a minimum 1.75 per cent increase and called on about 150 staff to strike on Thursday and Friday.
“The settlement redefines the relationship between the NUJ and the Company and puts us on track to work constructively on urgent issues of pay transparency and a new house agreement,” a joint statement by union officers Mike Roddy and Helen Long and editor-in-chief Stephen Adler said.
Adler said separately from New York: “I'm especially heartened that everyone involved worked so hard to reach an agreement that enables us to keep publishing the outstanding journalism our customers rely on in London and around the world.”
He added: “We listened to the NUJ’s concerns and, during extensive negotiations, went back with an improved pay offer.” The agreed three per cent increase includes a minimum pay raise of 2.5 per cent and an additional 0.5 per cent available for merit raises.
The threatened 48-hour stoppage had been timed to coincide with Thomson Reuters’ 2011 full year and Q4 earnings announcement due on Thursday.
The last strike at Reuters was in 1980 when The Newspaper Guild of New York went on strike for three weeks in support of a pay claim. NUJ members stopped work in solidarity.
● SOURCE Reuters
London-based members of the National Union of Journalists voted to accept a three per cent pay increase offered by Thomson Reuters with a raise of at least 2.5 per cent guaranteed for all journalists and the rest dependent on individual performance.
Union members last week rejected an offer of a minimum 1.75 per cent increase and called on about 150 staff to strike on Thursday and Friday.
“The settlement redefines the relationship between the NUJ and the Company and puts us on track to work constructively on urgent issues of pay transparency and a new house agreement,” a joint statement by union officers Mike Roddy and Helen Long and editor-in-chief Stephen Adler said.
Adler said separately from New York: “I'm especially heartened that everyone involved worked so hard to reach an agreement that enables us to keep publishing the outstanding journalism our customers rely on in London and around the world.”
He added: “We listened to the NUJ’s concerns and, during extensive negotiations, went back with an improved pay offer.” The agreed three per cent increase includes a minimum pay raise of 2.5 per cent and an additional 0.5 per cent available for merit raises.
The threatened 48-hour stoppage had been timed to coincide with Thomson Reuters’ 2011 full year and Q4 earnings announcement due on Thursday.
The last strike at Reuters was in 1980 when The Newspaper Guild of New York went on strike for three weeks in support of a pay claim. NUJ members stopped work in solidarity.
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters launches new safeguards for initiative journalism
Friday 03 February 2012
Reuters is instituting a new system of story proposals for initiative journalism. Reporters must tell editors in advance of writing what kinds of sources and statistics or data will be used and whether the story will need to be read for legal reasons or potential risk to the organisation’s reputation.
The new system comes just a week after Reuters was embarrassed by a story that required complex corrections to put right multiple factual errors. The episode became a journalistic talking point and dismayed old editorial hands.
No connection with what was described in-house as a fiasco and a disgrace was made by Paul Ingrassia, deputy editor-in-chief, in a note on Friday announcing the new system. The reason, he said, was to better focus journalists’ time and talent. “It will help the editors ensure that the time you are devoting to enterprising journalism is well spent,” he told staff.
“Reuters is the best real-time news organization in the world – and we intend to solidify our dominance as such,” he said. “Let me reinforce that crucial point: Our commitment to being the world’s best real-time news service isn’t changing. But the world is evolving. Our customers demand more of us than ever before – not only fast, accurate and fair real-time news, but also deep and proprietary insight into the companies, markets, governments, people, trends and ideas shaping our world. That means we need to do more initiative journalism – stories with original findings that wouldn’t see the light of day if we didn’t undertake them for our readers.”
Items that need to be proposed are any story tagged Analysis, Feature and Insight. Brief proposals are to be filed by a reporter’s manager, via e-mail, to regional special top-news distribution lists. The e-mail must explain what the story will say and why it matters.
“Very briefly describe the kinds of sources and stats or data that will be tapped. If the story will need to be read for legal or reputational-risk reasons, briefly flag that in the proposal. Run the idea by your manager. Your manager will vet and file the proposal.” Editors will reply to the e-mail quickly giving the idea a thumbs up or thumbs down and assign an editor who will work with the reporter to deliver the story in good condition, Ingrassia added.
● SOURCE Reuters
The new system comes just a week after Reuters was embarrassed by a story that required complex corrections to put right multiple factual errors. The episode became a journalistic talking point and dismayed old editorial hands.
No connection with what was described in-house as a fiasco and a disgrace was made by Paul Ingrassia, deputy editor-in-chief, in a note on Friday announcing the new system. The reason, he said, was to better focus journalists’ time and talent. “It will help the editors ensure that the time you are devoting to enterprising journalism is well spent,” he told staff.
“Reuters is the best real-time news organization in the world – and we intend to solidify our dominance as such,” he said. “Let me reinforce that crucial point: Our commitment to being the world’s best real-time news service isn’t changing. But the world is evolving. Our customers demand more of us than ever before – not only fast, accurate and fair real-time news, but also deep and proprietary insight into the companies, markets, governments, people, trends and ideas shaping our world. That means we need to do more initiative journalism – stories with original findings that wouldn’t see the light of day if we didn’t undertake them for our readers.”
Items that need to be proposed are any story tagged Analysis, Feature and Insight. Brief proposals are to be filed by a reporter’s manager, via e-mail, to regional special top-news distribution lists. The e-mail must explain what the story will say and why it matters.
“Very briefly describe the kinds of sources and stats or data that will be tapped. If the story will need to be read for legal or reputational-risk reasons, briefly flag that in the proposal. Run the idea by your manager. Your manager will vet and file the proposal.” Editors will reply to the e-mail quickly giving the idea a thumbs up or thumbs down and assign an editor who will work with the reporter to deliver the story in good condition, Ingrassia added.
● SOURCE Reuters
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
UK journalists vote to strike next week
Thursday 02 February 2012
Unionised journalists working for Thomson Reuters in Britain voted to strike next week over pay disputes with the group.
The 48-hour stoppage by members of the National Union of Journalists will be on Thursday 9 February and Friday 10 February. It will coincide with the group’s 2011 full year and Q4 earnings announcement due next Thursday.
There was 83 per cent support among NUJ members for industrial action over the union’s disputes with Thomson Reuters arising from its 0.70 per cent pay increase across the board for 2011 and proposed 1.75 per cent this year.
“Thomson Reuters must shoulder the responsibility for this dispute,” said NUJ chapel officers Mike Roddy and Helen Long. “The company ignored repeated warnings that members had reached a tipping point, after years of below inflation pay rises, combined with rising costs, that are pricing many members out of their jobs. Those with families who cannot afford to live in London are especially feeling the pain as they are forced to commute into the capital on the most expensive train lines in Europe.
“We hope management will now listen to its journalists and return to the table with a sensible offer to avert a costly strike.”
NUJ deputy general secretary Barry Fitzpatrick said: “This strike is about fairness. The management is proposing a below-inflation pay deal, while holding back money for a merit scheme. This is just not on. While our members struggle to make ends meet on their wages, the management should be putting all the money into an across the board pay increase.”
● SOURCE Press Gazette
The 48-hour stoppage by members of the National Union of Journalists will be on Thursday 9 February and Friday 10 February. It will coincide with the group’s 2011 full year and Q4 earnings announcement due next Thursday.
There was 83 per cent support among NUJ members for industrial action over the union’s disputes with Thomson Reuters arising from its 0.70 per cent pay increase across the board for 2011 and proposed 1.75 per cent this year.
“Thomson Reuters must shoulder the responsibility for this dispute,” said NUJ chapel officers Mike Roddy and Helen Long. “The company ignored repeated warnings that members had reached a tipping point, after years of below inflation pay rises, combined with rising costs, that are pricing many members out of their jobs. Those with families who cannot afford to live in London are especially feeling the pain as they are forced to commute into the capital on the most expensive train lines in Europe.
“We hope management will now listen to its journalists and return to the table with a sensible offer to avert a costly strike.”
NUJ deputy general secretary Barry Fitzpatrick said: “This strike is about fairness. The management is proposing a below-inflation pay deal, while holding back money for a merit scheme. This is just not on. While our members struggle to make ends meet on their wages, the management should be putting all the money into an across the board pay increase.”
● SOURCE Press Gazette
Multiple corrections on US story earn Reuters a black mark
Monday 30 January 2012
Reuters has been taken to task in the United States over a story that required complex corrections to put right five factual errors and became a larger talking point than the article itself.
The story last Thursday looked at what it called the “unlikely” vice-presidential prospects of Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio. The headline said “Florida’s Rubio a star, but an unlikely VP pick” for the Republican nominee’s running mate in this year’s presidential election.
“Former Reuters staffer and current Washington Examiner senior editorial writer Philip Klein called it a ‘hit piece’ and Daily Caller was early to spot problems with the reporting,” said The Poynter Institute, a journalism school at the University of South Florida, St Petersburg. “Politico’s Dylan Byers has also been on the story, and notes that Reuters is not talking publicly about what happened.
“One senior staffer at Reuters described the episode to me as a ‘fiasco,’ another as a ‘disgrace’,” a Poynter writer wrote on the institute’s website. “It was so bad, in fact, that the editors and writer involved have been asked not to talk about it. (I reached out to editors David Lindsey and Eric Walsh, but have not heard back.)”
Poynter said a correction had been added to the story, “but one thing to note is Reuters’ correction style isn’t well-suited to public consumption, as it’s more to geared towards the company’s newswire clients. As a result, the Rubio correction reads more like a list, offering no context or acknowledgement that the story suffered from serious problems. But at least you can see the errors that had to be fixed.” The correction:
(Removes words “and at times has had difficulty paying his mortgage,” paragraph 7; removes “he did not make payments on a $100,000-plus student loan” and instead states “he did not pay down the balance of a $100,000-plus student loan,” paragraph 10; removes “he was caught up in an Internal Revenue Service Investigation” and instead states “his name surfaced in an Internal Revenue Service investigation,” paragraph 12; removes “voted against Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee” and instead states “opposed President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor,” paragraph 41; removes “voted against Obama’s healthcare overhaul” and instead states “opposed Obama’s healthcare overhaul,” paragraph 41)
● SOURCE Poynter | The Newspaper Guild of New York
The story last Thursday looked at what it called the “unlikely” vice-presidential prospects of Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio. The headline said “Florida’s Rubio a star, but an unlikely VP pick” for the Republican nominee’s running mate in this year’s presidential election.
“Former Reuters staffer and current Washington Examiner senior editorial writer Philip Klein called it a ‘hit piece’ and Daily Caller was early to spot problems with the reporting,” said The Poynter Institute, a journalism school at the University of South Florida, St Petersburg. “Politico’s Dylan Byers has also been on the story, and notes that Reuters is not talking publicly about what happened.
“One senior staffer at Reuters described the episode to me as a ‘fiasco,’ another as a ‘disgrace’,” a Poynter writer wrote on the institute’s website. “It was so bad, in fact, that the editors and writer involved have been asked not to talk about it. (I reached out to editors David Lindsey and Eric Walsh, but have not heard back.)”
Poynter said a correction had been added to the story, “but one thing to note is Reuters’ correction style isn’t well-suited to public consumption, as it’s more to geared towards the company’s newswire clients. As a result, the Rubio correction reads more like a list, offering no context or acknowledgement that the story suffered from serious problems. But at least you can see the errors that had to be fixed.” The correction:
(Removes words “and at times has had difficulty paying his mortgage,” paragraph 7; removes “he did not make payments on a $100,000-plus student loan” and instead states “he did not pay down the balance of a $100,000-plus student loan,” paragraph 10; removes “he was caught up in an Internal Revenue Service Investigation” and instead states “his name surfaced in an Internal Revenue Service investigation,” paragraph 12; removes “voted against Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee” and instead states “opposed President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor,” paragraph 41; removes “voted against Obama’s healthcare overhaul” and instead states “opposed Obama’s healthcare overhaul,” paragraph 41)
● SOURCE Poynter | The Newspaper Guild of New York
Reuters editorial desk shake-up in drive for quality
Tuesday 24 January 2012
Reuters editorial’s global desk structure is being re-organised with the aim of “becoming the world’s leading provider of news and insight”.
There will be a single unified desk in each of the organisation’s three regions – Asia; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Americas – handling copy filed to two baskets divided by subject area: companies, commodities and energy stories in one and political and general, economics and markets stories in the other.
Overnight desk staffing in Europe and the Americas will cease.
“It’s the end of the World Desk as we know it,” one editorial insider commented.
“The reorganisation is not about saving money or cutting staff,” said a joint internal announcement by Ciro Scotti, deputy editor, Americas; Matthew Tostevin, desk editor in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Jean Yoon, Asia desk editor. “It’s about quality.”
The goals are:
● Further improve the quality of editing
● Reinforce standards to build a better capability for publishing and packaging our stories
● Preserve the specialist knowledge essential to writing for specific audiences
● Overhaul our ability to carefully edit and improve long-form stories.
“By unifying our regional desks, we will reinforce their importance to the heart of the news file and offer greater opportunities for talented journalists to make a career of desking or to use their experience as a springboard to advance within Reuters. We will improve consistency globally and be able to manage deskers and story flow more efficiently. One of the early goals will be to improve our international media monitoring so that we can end overnight desk staffing in Europe and the Americas.”
“Deskers will work ever more closely with news editors and bureaus to improve copy as needed through high-quality editing and rewriting. There will be tighter coordination between the Desk, Top News, and Enterprise teams.”
The new regional desks will be up and running by the end of February.
“These global improvements are vital for taking our news and insight to an even higher level. We look forward to everybody’s help in making sure they deliver the benefits they must.”
● SOURCE Reuters
There will be a single unified desk in each of the organisation’s three regions – Asia; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Americas – handling copy filed to two baskets divided by subject area: companies, commodities and energy stories in one and political and general, economics and markets stories in the other.
Overnight desk staffing in Europe and the Americas will cease.
“It’s the end of the World Desk as we know it,” one editorial insider commented.
“The reorganisation is not about saving money or cutting staff,” said a joint internal announcement by Ciro Scotti, deputy editor, Americas; Matthew Tostevin, desk editor in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Jean Yoon, Asia desk editor. “It’s about quality.”
The goals are:
● Further improve the quality of editing
● Reinforce standards to build a better capability for publishing and packaging our stories
● Preserve the specialist knowledge essential to writing for specific audiences
● Overhaul our ability to carefully edit and improve long-form stories.
“By unifying our regional desks, we will reinforce their importance to the heart of the news file and offer greater opportunities for talented journalists to make a career of desking or to use their experience as a springboard to advance within Reuters. We will improve consistency globally and be able to manage deskers and story flow more efficiently. One of the early goals will be to improve our international media monitoring so that we can end overnight desk staffing in Europe and the Americas.”
“Deskers will work ever more closely with news editors and bureaus to improve copy as needed through high-quality editing and rewriting. There will be tighter coordination between the Desk, Top News, and Enterprise teams.”
The new regional desks will be up and running by the end of February.
“These global improvements are vital for taking our news and insight to an even higher level. We look forward to everybody’s help in making sure they deliver the benefits they must.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Editorial jobs go in Toronto, New York, Chicago - reports
Thursday 15 December 2011
Reuters is moving its Canada-based online desk to India. Some 17 jobs out of 22 in Toronto are affected. Five positions will remain there. The rest will be taken up in Bangalore. At the same time, other editorial jobs – including those of managers – have also been cut in New York and Chicago this week.
The Canadian Media Guild, which represents about 60 people in Reuters’ Toronto office and others across Canada, said 17 permanent and five temporary workers were being cut. They were people who posted news stories and pictures to the ● Reuters website. The online operation has been based in Toronto since 2005. After the cuts, it will have five employees there. The cuts affect roughly one-third of Reuters’ editorial operations in Toronto, said the Guild.
Reuters said it had greatly increased the number of website staff over the last eight months. “As part of restructuring of our production staff, we’re moving some roles in our global online newsroom from Toronto to Asia. The online visuals desk remains in Toronto,” the company said in a statement.
Staff in New York and Chicago were also laid off. The Newspaper Guild of New York said: “In one of the shabbiest moves made by this increasingly shabby company, seven of our Guild colleagues at 3XSQ and one at the Chicago office were laid off on Monday, December 12. Members of the client administrator group – some of whom have worked here for over 30 years – walked into the office Monday morning only to be told, twelve days before Christmas, ‘Your job is gone, as of today.’
“As soulless as this layoff of Guild members was, it was better than what happened to a handful of editorial managers this week. Upper management simply picked a few and sent them packing. If there’s any question about the worth of union membership, the answer can be found at the empty desks of managers who had no Guild contract.”
It added: “This seems standard operating procedure for this new administration: long chirpy emails from the top brass on how well we’re doing and how much high-priced talent we’re hiring, but public silence on the forced departures of the workers who have created this success. There’s one printable word to describe it: shabby.”
● SOURCE The Toronto Star | Canadian Business | Newspaper Guild of New York
The Canadian Media Guild, which represents about 60 people in Reuters’ Toronto office and others across Canada, said 17 permanent and five temporary workers were being cut. They were people who posted news stories and pictures to the ● Reuters website. The online operation has been based in Toronto since 2005. After the cuts, it will have five employees there. The cuts affect roughly one-third of Reuters’ editorial operations in Toronto, said the Guild.
Reuters said it had greatly increased the number of website staff over the last eight months. “As part of restructuring of our production staff, we’re moving some roles in our global online newsroom from Toronto to Asia. The online visuals desk remains in Toronto,” the company said in a statement.
Staff in New York and Chicago were also laid off. The Newspaper Guild of New York said: “In one of the shabbiest moves made by this increasingly shabby company, seven of our Guild colleagues at 3XSQ and one at the Chicago office were laid off on Monday, December 12. Members of the client administrator group – some of whom have worked here for over 30 years – walked into the office Monday morning only to be told, twelve days before Christmas, ‘Your job is gone, as of today.’
“As soulless as this layoff of Guild members was, it was better than what happened to a handful of editorial managers this week. Upper management simply picked a few and sent them packing. If there’s any question about the worth of union membership, the answer can be found at the empty desks of managers who had no Guild contract.”
It added: “This seems standard operating procedure for this new administration: long chirpy emails from the top brass on how well we’re doing and how much high-priced talent we’re hiring, but public silence on the forced departures of the workers who have created this success. There’s one printable word to describe it: shabby.”
● SOURCE The Toronto Star | Canadian Business | Newspaper Guild of New York
Huge challenges for Reuters in 2012 - Stephen Adler
Wednesday 14 December 2011
Reuters faces enormous challenges in 2012 and beyond, editor-in-chief Stephen Adler said on Wednesday.
“We must accelerate our pursuit of journalistic excellence, with the understanding that our news is a central resource for Thomson Reuters that must serve all the company’s customers,” he said in an end-of-year message to editorial staff seen by The Baron.
“As we’ve discussed many times, winning in our highly competitive markets requires us to differentiate ourselves by offering more value – not just more of the same. We will succeed by providing a combination of smart, forward-looking news coverage, more exclusives, richer enterprise journalism, effective data mining, memorable story-telling, targeted community-building, trenchant commentary and analysis, and better designed, easier-to-navigate news delivery channels.”
Adler said: “Throughout the year, many of you have asked: How do we remain fast, accurate, and fair while also providing the depth and insight you keep talking about? How do we consider the needs of a broad customer base when we’ve been asked to focus more narrowly in the past? There’s no easy answer, so we will have to ask the right questions with each assignment. Sometimes the value of a story will come from chasing the news and reporting each incremental move. Sometimes it will come from stepping away from the day-to-day to develop a longer-term story that will ultimately benefit the reader more. Often we will need to operate on two tracks simultaneously, with some people focusing on immediate news and others looking beyond the moment to go deeper and help our coverage win not just the hour or day, but the week, month and year. All this requires judgment more than blanket rules, which is why we’ve tried to cut down on many of the edicts.”
Adler said Reuters moves into 2012 with extraordinary backing from the new corporate leadership, the same staunch support received from Tom Glocer and his team in 2011. “Tom’s commitment to excellence, and his clarion call that news is the heart and soul of the company, have brought us to this moment and helped us lay the groundwork for stronger performance in the coming months. We will now be led by incoming CEO Jim Smith, to whom I reported when he was running the professional businesses and I was working to integrate news into their products. Jim spent much of his career in Thomson newspapers and has a deep understanding of, and great passion for, journalism. I can tell you from personal experience that Jim will be an ardent advocate for news quality and editorial integrity. As you get to know him, you'll also find that he is an extraordinary leader who combines great business instincts and discipline with humor, warmth, and decency.
“Bottom line: I am optimistic, energized, and eager to embrace the opportunities ahead. Our goal today, as it was when I began the job, is to be the number-one news provider in the world. As before, I’m in favor of anything that gets us there and against anything that gets in the way.”
● SOURCE Reuters
“We must accelerate our pursuit of journalistic excellence, with the understanding that our news is a central resource for Thomson Reuters that must serve all the company’s customers,” he said in an end-of-year message to editorial staff seen by The Baron.
“As we’ve discussed many times, winning in our highly competitive markets requires us to differentiate ourselves by offering more value – not just more of the same. We will succeed by providing a combination of smart, forward-looking news coverage, more exclusives, richer enterprise journalism, effective data mining, memorable story-telling, targeted community-building, trenchant commentary and analysis, and better designed, easier-to-navigate news delivery channels.”
Adler said: “Throughout the year, many of you have asked: How do we remain fast, accurate, and fair while also providing the depth and insight you keep talking about? How do we consider the needs of a broad customer base when we’ve been asked to focus more narrowly in the past? There’s no easy answer, so we will have to ask the right questions with each assignment. Sometimes the value of a story will come from chasing the news and reporting each incremental move. Sometimes it will come from stepping away from the day-to-day to develop a longer-term story that will ultimately benefit the reader more. Often we will need to operate on two tracks simultaneously, with some people focusing on immediate news and others looking beyond the moment to go deeper and help our coverage win not just the hour or day, but the week, month and year. All this requires judgment more than blanket rules, which is why we’ve tried to cut down on many of the edicts.”
Adler said Reuters moves into 2012 with extraordinary backing from the new corporate leadership, the same staunch support received from Tom Glocer and his team in 2011. “Tom’s commitment to excellence, and his clarion call that news is the heart and soul of the company, have brought us to this moment and helped us lay the groundwork for stronger performance in the coming months. We will now be led by incoming CEO Jim Smith, to whom I reported when he was running the professional businesses and I was working to integrate news into their products. Jim spent much of his career in Thomson newspapers and has a deep understanding of, and great passion for, journalism. I can tell you from personal experience that Jim will be an ardent advocate for news quality and editorial integrity. As you get to know him, you'll also find that he is an extraordinary leader who combines great business instincts and discipline with humor, warmth, and decency.
“Bottom line: I am optimistic, energized, and eager to embrace the opportunities ahead. Our goal today, as it was when I began the job, is to be the number-one news provider in the world. As before, I’m in favor of anything that gets us there and against anything that gets in the way.”
● SOURCE Reuters
New Thomson Reuters CEO backs editorial hiring plans - Stephen Adler
Wednesday 07 December 2011
Thomson Reuters’ new chief executive James Smith supports Reuters’ editorial growth strategy, Stephen Adler, editor-in-chief, said and will not curtail his hiring spree.
“We’re full speed ahead,” Adler told The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch website.
Some media analysts aren’t quite so sure, columnist Jon Friedman said. They suggest that Smith’s promotion as replacement for CEO Tom Glocer signifies the company’s desire to undercut Adler’s go-go spending ways. They believe that Thomson Reuters’ challenges will force Adler, appointed to the top editorial job in February, to curtail the big spending and eventually shrink the size of his staff.
Friedman said Adler couldn’t have sounded more confident that Smith, who takes over on 1 January, will continue to have “an extraordinary commitment” to Adler’s strategy of investing heavily to strengthen its commitment to enterprise reporting and to recruit journalists such as the WSJ’s Michael Williams and Bloomberg television executive Dan Colarusso.
“Adler said he, too, has heard the whispers from Thomson Reuters’ critics but declared: ‘This doesn’t change anything’,” Friedman wrote.
“What’s also not likely to change is the industry’s confusion about what Adler wants to accomplish,” Friedman wrote. “Does he want his operation to be true to its roots as a British-based wire service that reports doggedly on financial markets or a gleaming long-form journalism operation that wants to be known for its enterprise and investigative reporting? Can Adler make both sides co-exist?”
Adler has tried hard to change the culture of Reuters by wooing a plethora of non-wire-service journalists, Friedman said. “He is betting that he can maintain a strong position in the meat-and-potatoes work of covering the financial markets while making a name for Reuters in enterprise writing.
“In his first year, Adler and his team have succeeded in changing the company’s rather stodgy image. Now, they must find a way to continue the momentum at a time when the world at large expects him to rein in his growth plans.”
● SOURCE MarketWatch
“We’re full speed ahead,” Adler told The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch website.
Some media analysts aren’t quite so sure, columnist Jon Friedman said. They suggest that Smith’s promotion as replacement for CEO Tom Glocer signifies the company’s desire to undercut Adler’s go-go spending ways. They believe that Thomson Reuters’ challenges will force Adler, appointed to the top editorial job in February, to curtail the big spending and eventually shrink the size of his staff.
Friedman said Adler couldn’t have sounded more confident that Smith, who takes over on 1 January, will continue to have “an extraordinary commitment” to Adler’s strategy of investing heavily to strengthen its commitment to enterprise reporting and to recruit journalists such as the WSJ’s Michael Williams and Bloomberg television executive Dan Colarusso.
“Adler said he, too, has heard the whispers from Thomson Reuters’ critics but declared: ‘This doesn’t change anything’,” Friedman wrote.
“What’s also not likely to change is the industry’s confusion about what Adler wants to accomplish,” Friedman wrote. “Does he want his operation to be true to its roots as a British-based wire service that reports doggedly on financial markets or a gleaming long-form journalism operation that wants to be known for its enterprise and investigative reporting? Can Adler make both sides co-exist?”
Adler has tried hard to change the culture of Reuters by wooing a plethora of non-wire-service journalists, Friedman said. “He is betting that he can maintain a strong position in the meat-and-potatoes work of covering the financial markets while making a name for Reuters in enterprise writing.
“In his first year, Adler and his team have succeeded in changing the company’s rather stodgy image. Now, they must find a way to continue the momentum at a time when the world at large expects him to rein in his growth plans.”
● SOURCE MarketWatch
Reuters shakes up global desk operations
Thursday 01 December 2011
Reuters announced a major shake-up of its worldwide desk operations after a two-month review. Henceforth there will be a unified desk in each of the organisation’s three regions – Asia; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Americas.
In a joint statement to staff, editor-in-chief Stephen Adler and his deputy Paul Ingrassia said a strong desk had always been central to upholding and improving Reuters’ standards and quality, “and it’s important that we staff and organize the desk to draw the most from its deep well of specialist knowledge and to ensure that the file is edited clearly and quickly”.
After a review by Reginald Chua, former editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal now Reuters data editor, they said the specialist “tracks” within each desk will remain, but they will report to a single strong desk head, who in turn reports to the regional editor. “This structure will allow the desk head the flexibility to manage the staff more efficiently and adjust to the flow of stories while at the same time bringing to bear deep knowledge of asset classes and issues. It should also provide better career opportunities for desk editors, who can move across specialist areas more easily.
“And critically, it will ensure that desk operations have strong advocates in the new chiefs, who will also play key roles in upholding Reuters’ standards.”
The new desk chiefs are
● Asia - Jean Yoon, based in Singapore. She joined Reuters in 1995 in Seoul as a correspondent and is currently general manager for South East Asia and the Pacific.
● Europe, Middle East and Africa - Matthew Tostevin moves to London from Africa, where he is general manager, to run the EMEA desk. Tostevin joined Reuters in Congo in 1995 after reporting for BBC radio from a series of African war zones.
● Americas - Ciro Scotti, former managing editor of BusinessWeek, before and after its acquisition by Bloomberg, joins Reuters as desk head. After leaving Bloomberg Businessweek in October 2010, he helped manage the merger of Newsweek and the online publication The Daily Beast. Since April he has been executive editor of The Fiscal Times, a website devoted to analysis of and commentary on the major issues confronting America and the global economy.
“Ciro will start next Monday, and we expect that Jean and Matthew will transition into their new roles by the end of the year,” Adler and Ingrassia said. “They’ll be spending the next few months working through the details of the new desk structure, which we expect to implement in phases by the first quarter of next year. We’ll announce more details once the desk heads have settled into their new roles.”
As part of the desk review, the role that Top News plays in leading and managing the most important stories of the day was also examined. “We need to ensure that those stories – which cross asset classes and regions and are of interest to the broadest range of our readers – are among the most insightful, sharpest and best-written on the file.
“So we’ve decided to build on a successful pilot project in Asia and increase the staffing of Top News in all the regions, including adding several lead writers to each team to handle the top stories. This will ensure more continuity of editing and more attention to those stories. We’ll also rotate top editors from the desk through the Top News teams, both to bring more specialist knowledge to bear and to hone editing skills on the desk. We’ll announce more details about these changes in the coming weeks and months.”
● SOURCE Reuters
In a joint statement to staff, editor-in-chief Stephen Adler and his deputy Paul Ingrassia said a strong desk had always been central to upholding and improving Reuters’ standards and quality, “and it’s important that we staff and organize the desk to draw the most from its deep well of specialist knowledge and to ensure that the file is edited clearly and quickly”.
After a review by Reginald Chua, former editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal now Reuters data editor, they said the specialist “tracks” within each desk will remain, but they will report to a single strong desk head, who in turn reports to the regional editor. “This structure will allow the desk head the flexibility to manage the staff more efficiently and adjust to the flow of stories while at the same time bringing to bear deep knowledge of asset classes and issues. It should also provide better career opportunities for desk editors, who can move across specialist areas more easily.
“And critically, it will ensure that desk operations have strong advocates in the new chiefs, who will also play key roles in upholding Reuters’ standards.”
The new desk chiefs are
● Asia - Jean Yoon, based in Singapore. She joined Reuters in 1995 in Seoul as a correspondent and is currently general manager for South East Asia and the Pacific.
● Europe, Middle East and Africa - Matthew Tostevin moves to London from Africa, where he is general manager, to run the EMEA desk. Tostevin joined Reuters in Congo in 1995 after reporting for BBC radio from a series of African war zones.
● Americas - Ciro Scotti, former managing editor of BusinessWeek, before and after its acquisition by Bloomberg, joins Reuters as desk head. After leaving Bloomberg Businessweek in October 2010, he helped manage the merger of Newsweek and the online publication The Daily Beast. Since April he has been executive editor of The Fiscal Times, a website devoted to analysis of and commentary on the major issues confronting America and the global economy.
“Ciro will start next Monday, and we expect that Jean and Matthew will transition into their new roles by the end of the year,” Adler and Ingrassia said. “They’ll be spending the next few months working through the details of the new desk structure, which we expect to implement in phases by the first quarter of next year. We’ll announce more details once the desk heads have settled into their new roles.”
As part of the desk review, the role that Top News plays in leading and managing the most important stories of the day was also examined. “We need to ensure that those stories – which cross asset classes and regions and are of interest to the broadest range of our readers – are among the most insightful, sharpest and best-written on the file.
“So we’ve decided to build on a successful pilot project in Asia and increase the staffing of Top News in all the regions, including adding several lead writers to each team to handle the top stories. This will ensure more continuity of editing and more attention to those stories. We’ll also rotate top editors from the desk through the Top News teams, both to bring more specialist knowledge to bear and to hone editing skills on the desk. We’ll announce more details about these changes in the coming weeks and months.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Bugs aside, Reuters is halfway to full editorial system rollout
Thursday 01 September 2011
The new Lynx Editor system, which replaces the decades-old System 77/Coyote, has been successfully adopted in Asia and much of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. More than half of Reuters’ text journalists now rely almost exclusively on Lynx Editor to write, edit and file copy.
This is a big achievement, Adrian Dickson, pictured, global head, news product, said in a message to editorial staff.
Deployment in Europe is due to be completed by the end of September before moving to the Americas in the last months of the year. Remaining national services in Asia, the Middle East and Europe as well as a handful of smaller teams will start migrating to Lynx Editor in the first quarter of 2012.
“If all goes well by mid 2012 all Reuters journalists will be on the same editing system, capable of sharing stories and communicating with each other via screentop for the first time ever,” Dickson said.
“We’re only halfway there but already it’s been a long journey and not without its challenges. Twice in the last month Lynx users in Asia were forced to shift back briefly to System 77/Coyote following a systems outage that temporarily prevented journalists from using Lynx to edit and file copy.”
The first outage began with a small hardware failure that created instability in a data centre software system. The problem was compounded by errors in incident management. The second was caused by “errors in the release of a database script designed to optimize Lynx Editor performance … Fortunately technical teams learned the lessons of the previous incident and this time they were fast to shift users on to a support system.”
Dickson said: “These setbacks are never welcome. But they’re not unusual in projects of this magnitude given their complexity and spread across several geographies. Nor should we be surprised if we face similar incidents in the future. Over time journalist, support and development teams will become more practiced at anticipating bugs and at reacting quickly and effectively when they arise…
“We remain confident Lynx has the resiliency to manage the 10,000 plus stories that are filed over Reuters systems on most weekdays. We are also convinced Lynx is robust enough to continue to grow with us as demand for our news increases in the future.”
● SOURCE Reuters
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
Reuters appoints new editors and bureau chiefs in Asia
Wednesday 27 July 2011
Reuters announced new appointments to its Asia editorial team aimed at deepening specialisation, simplifying news editing and freeing “our best journalists to produce truly compelling, agenda-setting stories”.
● John Chalmers, editor, political and general news, Asia, takes on the new role of bureau chief South Asia, returning to New Delhi for the second time in his Reuters career.
● Lincoln Feast, deputy editor for Asia company news and head of the company news desk in Singapore, becomes bureau chief Pacific, based in Sydney.
● Mark Bendeich, Pacific bureau chief, joins the Asia top news team as a deputy top news editor. He will remain in Sydney.
● Michael Flaherty, Asia editor-in-charge, company news, based in Hong Kong, becomes financial services editor, Asia.
● Eric Burroughs, Asia financial markets editor in Hong Kong, takes on a new project to deepen market coverage across asset classes. “Eric will recruit and run a team that will use expert editing, smart reporting and cool technology to create a new stream of content that will support our desktop business,” said Dayan Candappa, Asia managing editor. “He will launch the project in Asia and then oversee the rollout across the world, working with colleagues in EMEA and the Americas. This is a critical project, one of the first commitments the new leadership team has made to the business and one that will help blunt challenges from Dow Jones and Bloomberg in the real-time commentary and analysis space.”
● SOURCE Reuters
● John Chalmers, editor, political and general news, Asia, takes on the new role of bureau chief South Asia, returning to New Delhi for the second time in his Reuters career.
● Lincoln Feast, deputy editor for Asia company news and head of the company news desk in Singapore, becomes bureau chief Pacific, based in Sydney.
● Mark Bendeich, Pacific bureau chief, joins the Asia top news team as a deputy top news editor. He will remain in Sydney.
● Michael Flaherty, Asia editor-in-charge, company news, based in Hong Kong, becomes financial services editor, Asia.
● Eric Burroughs, Asia financial markets editor in Hong Kong, takes on a new project to deepen market coverage across asset classes. “Eric will recruit and run a team that will use expert editing, smart reporting and cool technology to create a new stream of content that will support our desktop business,” said Dayan Candappa, Asia managing editor. “He will launch the project in Asia and then oversee the rollout across the world, working with colleagues in EMEA and the Americas. This is a critical project, one of the first commitments the new leadership team has made to the business and one that will help blunt challenges from Dow Jones and Bloomberg in the real-time commentary and analysis space.”
● 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
Reuters mulls sports desk move to New York - report
Friday 24 June 2011
Reuters is considering shifting the hub of its sports editing operation to New York from London, the Sports Journalists' Association (SJA) reports. Three senior sports editors are leaving in the coming months.
Paul Radford, global sports editor for the past five years, is to stand down in 2012 and manage a transition to his ultimate successor while supervising coverage of the London Olympic Games, the SJA said. It will be Radford’s sixth Olympics in charge of Reuters’ award-winning sports coverage, in which he will oversee the work of 300 reporters, editors, photographers and support staff.
The sports desk’s number three, sports production editor Kevin Fylan, had his leaving party last week, as he and Jon Bramley, deputy sports editor, are going to work on the Volvo Round the World yacht race.
The SJA said the company’s American management is considering shifting its sports operation to the other side of the Atlantic. Such a move, were it to go ahead, would comprehensively shift the focus of Reuters’ internationally regarded sports coverage, with a New York office operating in a time zone five hours or more behind Europe.
A job advertisement for global sports editor was posted this week. It said: “The successful candidate will lead a global team of specialist sports correspondents and editors and work with our wider bureau network to guarantee the scope and quality of our internationally recognized sports newsgathering team. The editor will be expected to contribute directly to the file through reporting, editing and analyzing major sports stories and themes…
“Based in London; we will consider New York for an exceptional candidate. Local terms, no relocation.”
The job advertisement said: “The successful candidate will work closely on a handover with our global sports editor, who is retiring in mid 2012, through the balance of this year before assuming sole responsibility for this ever popular area of coverage in the run up to the London Olympics.”
Reuters’ sports editor has always carried massive influence in sports media matters, the SJA said. The late Steve Parry, Radford’s close colleague and predecessor as Reuters sports editor, served for many years on the International Olympic Commission’s press commission. Likewise, Radford has been on the commission for more than 10 years and was chairman of its working group at the Beijing and Vancouver Games, as well as working closely with the London Olympics committee.
Reuters has also carried much weight in negotiations between media operators and other sports events, such as the football, rugby and cricket World Cups. Whether that would change, and Reuters’ sports coverage alter to focus more on NFL, NHL, Nascar and the like if they were run from New York is difficult to assess, the SJA added.
Media blogger Roy Greenslade, writing in The Guardian, commented: “All interesting speculation, of course, but it’s hardly conclusive proof of a transAtlantic switch. And Reuters, incidentally, is keeping its counsel.”
● SOURCE Sports Journalists' Association | Reuters | The Guardian
Paul Radford, global sports editor for the past five years, is to stand down in 2012 and manage a transition to his ultimate successor while supervising coverage of the London Olympic Games, the SJA said. It will be Radford’s sixth Olympics in charge of Reuters’ award-winning sports coverage, in which he will oversee the work of 300 reporters, editors, photographers and support staff.
The sports desk’s number three, sports production editor Kevin Fylan, had his leaving party last week, as he and Jon Bramley, deputy sports editor, are going to work on the Volvo Round the World yacht race.
The SJA said the company’s American management is considering shifting its sports operation to the other side of the Atlantic. Such a move, were it to go ahead, would comprehensively shift the focus of Reuters’ internationally regarded sports coverage, with a New York office operating in a time zone five hours or more behind Europe.
A job advertisement for global sports editor was posted this week. It said: “The successful candidate will lead a global team of specialist sports correspondents and editors and work with our wider bureau network to guarantee the scope and quality of our internationally recognized sports newsgathering team. The editor will be expected to contribute directly to the file through reporting, editing and analyzing major sports stories and themes…
“Based in London; we will consider New York for an exceptional candidate. Local terms, no relocation.”
The job advertisement said: “The successful candidate will work closely on a handover with our global sports editor, who is retiring in mid 2012, through the balance of this year before assuming sole responsibility for this ever popular area of coverage in the run up to the London Olympics.”
Reuters’ sports editor has always carried massive influence in sports media matters, the SJA said. The late Steve Parry, Radford’s close colleague and predecessor as Reuters sports editor, served for many years on the International Olympic Commission’s press commission. Likewise, Radford has been on the commission for more than 10 years and was chairman of its working group at the Beijing and Vancouver Games, as well as working closely with the London Olympics committee.
Reuters has also carried much weight in negotiations between media operators and other sports events, such as the football, rugby and cricket World Cups. Whether that would change, and Reuters’ sports coverage alter to focus more on NFL, NHL, Nascar and the like if they were run from New York is difficult to assess, the SJA added.
Media blogger Roy Greenslade, writing in The Guardian, commented: “All interesting speculation, of course, but it’s hardly conclusive proof of a transAtlantic switch. And Reuters, incidentally, is keeping its counsel.”
● SOURCE Sports Journalists' Association | Reuters | The Guardian
Reuters names new regional bureau chiefs and editors
Wednesday 22 June 2011
The new job “is firmly focused on delivering memorable news stories and overseeing a strong and competitive news file,” said newly-appointed EMEA editor Michael Stott, pictured.
“Our regional bureau chiefs/editors will lead from the front, writing stories and conducting high-level interviews which showcase their expertise and set the news agenda,” he said in a message to staff. “They will be in the forefront of delivering the enterprise stories and big-picture analytical stories which will distinguish us from competitors. They are also tasked with leading news coverage from their regions, running the bureaux, recruiting, promoting, rewarding and retaining the best journalistic talent we can find.”
The initial appointments are
● Samia Nakhoul as Middle East editor, initially based in London but likely to move to the region in due course. The Middle East, Gulf, Arab nations of North Africa, and Turkey report to her. Caroline Drees is Middle East/North Africa editorial region general manager.
● Alex Smith as financial industry editor, based in London.
● Noah Barkin as bureau chief, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, based in Berlin and Frankfurt. Olaf Zapke is general manager, based in Frankfurt.
● Tim Heritage as bureau chief, Central and Eastern Europe and CIS based in Moscow. Bureaux in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria report to him. Olaf Zapke is general manager.
● Geert de Clercq as bureau chief, France/Benelux, based in Paris. Bureaux in Belgium, France, Netherlands and Luxembourg report to him. Mike Bergmeijer is general manager.
● Barry Moody as bureau chief, Southern Europe and Balkans, based in Rome. The region includes Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Balkans. Mike Bergmeijer is general manager.
● Paul Taylor – European affairs editor, based in Paris, reporting to EMEA news editor Janet McBride.
Stott said further announcements covering the remainder of the EMEA geography, London desks and EMEA news editing, would follow.
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters editorial: back to the future
Sunday 22 May 2011
Rob Doherty, pictured, former Washington bureau chief, is returning to Reuters to head up the operation in the US capital. He left in 2008, since when he has been working for the Hatcher Group, a public affairs and communications firm that connects non-profit organisations and foundations to policymakers and the media.
Michael Stott, global editor for the Top News Desk, is appointed regional editor for Europe-Mideast-Africa. He will oversee text journalists in the region with the exception of commodities and energy staff and the International Financing Review, which will continue to report to Richard Mably and to Dayan Candappa, respectively, on a global basis.
Announcing the moves, deputy editor-in-chief Paul Ingrassia said Stott would continue in his present role on an interim basis, pending moves to further integrate the Top News Desk into the regional news structure.
“The sum of these moves means that we are returning, in some respects, back toward the regional text news structure that Reuters had in years past,” Ingrassia said in a note to staff last week.
Region-specific general managers will report to Stuart Karle, chief operating officer and former Wall Street Journal general counsel, who joined Reuters last month in an editorial restructuring announced by new editor-in-chief Stephen Adler. They will focus on “the critical role of supporting editorial operations, unencumbered by the demands of the file”. They will supervise operations, logistics, and safety, and coordinate editorial’s partnership with teams from human resources, public relations, legal, real estate and facilities, finance and security. Their role will include budgets, technology, and representing Reuters.
The general managers are
● Sarah Edmonds – UK, Ireland and Nordic states
● Olaf Zapke – Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Balkans,
Russia/CIS and Turkey
● Michael Bergmeijer, a new hire – France and Benelux
● Barry Moody – Southern Europe
● Christina Pantin – Bangalore
● Duncan Pitcairn – South Asia
● Phil Smith – North Asia
● Jean Yoon – South East Asia and Pacific
● Caroline Drees – Middle East
● Matthew Tostevin – Africa
● Saul Hudson – Latin America
● Michael Christie – Northern Latin America and US states on the Mexican border other than California
● Richard Baum – New York and Canada
● Rob Doherty – Washington DC and bureaus not covered by Baum and Christie.
● SOURCE Reuters
This item has been corrected to make clear that the general managers report to Stuart Karle, chief operating officer, not Paul Ingrassia, deputy editor-in-chief – Editor.
Stay focused on business priorities, Stephen Adler tells staff
Wednesday 18 May 2011
“We are fortunate to work in an organization that recognizes that our work adds value only if it is accurate, unbiased, and impervious to external influence,” he said in a note to staff.
Relaying some of the questions he and his deputy, new hire Paul Ingrassia who visited London and Frankfurt, heard most often and how they responded, Adler said one question was “Do you care about global coverage, or are you primarily focused on North America?”
His answer: “There is no either/or here. Reuters global character is one of our biggest competitive advantages, and the huge financial and geopolitical stories of the past three months – from Japan to the Middle East, from insider trading to the royal wedding – illustrate the great value of our global capabilities in text and multimedia. But we can’t be truly global without increasing our presence and impact in the U.S.”
The same sort of answer applies to the question “What do you value more: enterprise stories or snaps and market-moving stories?”
“The short answer is: Both. We can’t be Reuters without the latter, and we can’t improve and grow without the former. Speed, accuracy, fairness, and relevance are our hallmarks, and must remain so. We need to be on the ground in Ivory Coast, witnessing the first shipments of cocoa leaving the port, and we need to be the first to report the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn or the latest developments in the commodities markets. But our customers don’t just seek information; they also seek context and insight, and an enterprise piece that surfaces diplomatic cables to reveal the likely future of the Chinese government adds unmistakable value, not only for customers looking for investment strategies but for readers everywhere seeking in-depth understanding of world affairs.”
Asked what he was going to do about bureaucracy, Adler said: “We heard this question everywhere! Several people told me that they had actually fled managerial roles because the procedures were so onerous. Our new structure, with its focus on separating operations from news, should help. But [chief operating officer] Stuart Karle, the new senior leadership team, and I are also aware that we have to simplify individual procedures and leave room for leaders at the local level to exercise judgment rather than merely follow rules.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Silence in Reuters newsrooms marks Press Freedom Day
Tuesday 03 May 2011
Reuters newsrooms fell silent for one minute on Tuesday – World Press Freedom Day – to remember journalists killed in the pursuit of their profession.
The minute's silence was observed at the most appropriate time for regions and bureaus. UNESCO has called for the mark of respect to take place every year to raise awareness about the safety of journalists who are exposed to violence as they go about their work.
Editor-in-chief Stephen Adler said: "We are committed to making the working environment for journalists as safe as possible and are proud to support such industry-wide initiatives."
The main international event was held in Washington on the theme 21st century media: new frontiers, new barriers.
At Thomson Reuters' London offices, UNESCO and the International News Safety Institute hosted a panel discussion on the Arab Spring: freedom to report.
● SOURCE Reuters
The minute's silence was observed at the most appropriate time for regions and bureaus. UNESCO has called for the mark of respect to take place every year to raise awareness about the safety of journalists who are exposed to violence as they go about their work.
Editor-in-chief Stephen Adler said: "We are committed to making the working environment for journalists as safe as possible and are proud to support such industry-wide initiatives."
The main international event was held in Washington on the theme 21st century media: new frontiers, new barriers.
At Thomson Reuters' London offices, UNESCO and the International News Safety Institute hosted a panel discussion on the Arab Spring: freedom to report.
● SOURCE Reuters
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
Reuters adds paparazzi-type Hollywood video to new service
Monday 07 March 2011
Reuters is to distribute paparazzi-type footage of Hollywood celebrities on its new Reuters America service.
The company said on Monday that distributing footage of celebrities from video website Hollywood.TV would serve “a crucial role for entertainment programming needs and complement celebrity and entertainment coverage currently offered by Reuters”.
Hollywood.TV produces celebrity footage in southern California and beyond.
The revenue-sharing deal is aimed at enhancing Reuters America which is available via Reuters’ newly-launched unified content platform.
● SOURCE Paid Content | Poynter
The company said on Monday that distributing footage of celebrities from video website Hollywood.TV would serve “a crucial role for entertainment programming needs and complement celebrity and entertainment coverage currently offered by Reuters”.
Hollywood.TV produces celebrity footage in southern California and beyond.
The revenue-sharing deal is aimed at enhancing Reuters America which is available via Reuters’ newly-launched unified content platform.
● SOURCE Paid Content | Poynter
Reuters cracks down on reader comment
Monday 27 September 2010
The new process gives special status to readers whose comments have passed muster in the past. It’s an important step towards a more civil and thoughtful conversation, Dean Wright, global editor, ethics, innovation and news standards, said on Monday.
Wright said he had become increasingly concerned about the quality of discourse in comments on news stories on ● reuters.com and on other major news sites. “On some stories, the ‘conversation’ has been little more than partisans slinging invective at each other under the cloak of anonymity.”
Richard Baum, global editor for consumer media, pictured, said that like many major news publishers, Reuters had agonised over how to balance enthusiasm for reader comments on stories with belief that few people would benefit from a free-for-all.
“Most of our readers respect our request for comments that ‘advance the story,’ by submitting relevant anecdotes, links and data or by challenging our reporting when they think we’ve fallen short of our editorial standards. It’s rewarding, sometimes even exhilarating, to see the way our audience builds on our coverage.
“Where we struggle is with comments that we believe contribute nothing useful to the conversation. I’m not talking about obscenities and spam — we have software that aims to block the publication of those — but something more subjective.”
The type of comments that fall foul of Reuters’ moderators are
● racism and other hate language that is not caught by software filters
● obscene words with letters substituted to get around the software filters
● semi-literate spelling
● uncivil behaviour towards other commentators
● incitement to violence
● comments that have nothing to do with the story
● comments that have been pasted across multiple stories
● comments that are unusually long, unless they are very well written
● excessive use of capital letters
“Until recently, our moderation process involved editors going through a basket of all incoming comments, publishing the ones that met our standards and blocking the others,” Baum said. “This was unsatisfactory because it delayed the publication of good comments, especially overnight and at weekends when our staffing is lighter.”
The new process grants “VIP status” to people who have had comments approved previously. Every time Reuters approves a comment, the reader scores a point. Once the reader has reached a certain number of points, they become a “recognised user” whose comments will be published instantly. Editors will still review comments after publication.
“It’s not a perfect system, but we believe it’s a foundation for facilitating a civil and rewarding discussion that’s open to the widest range of people,” Baum said.
● SOURCE Reuters
Michael Stott named global top news editor
Thursday 19 August 2010
Based in London, he will be responsible for driving the news editing and publishing of the top global stories each day with effect from October. He will lead regional top news teams which will be the core of Reuters news editing operation.
Stott joined Reuters from Cambridge in 1986 as a graduate trainee. His previous roles include bureau chief Mexico and Central America, chief correspondent UK and Ireland and editor, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Prior to moving to Moscow in 2006 to lead coverage of Russia and the CIS republics he spent three years working for sales and divisional operations in London developing the marketing of domestic news services worldwide and driving their revenue growth.
● SOURCE Reuters
Kieran Doherty and Dylan Martinez win news photography prizes
Thursday 01 July 2010
Reuters photographers Kieran Doherty and Dylan Martinez have been honoured in the 2010 Press Photographer’s Year awards.
Doherty won first prize in the news category with this picture:
A young girl stands with other mourners as the hearses carrying the coffins of five British soldiers are driven through the streets of Wootton Bassett. Lance Sergeant Dave Greenhalgh, Lance Corporal Darren Hicks, Kingsman Sean Dawson, Rifleman Mark Marshall and Sapper Guy Mellors were killed in separate incidents in Afghanistan’s Helmand province earlier in February. 18 February 2009.
Martinez won first prize for features with this picture:
A dog walker strolls through an earthquake-damaged district of Padang, Indonesia’s West Sumatra province. 7 October 2009.
Now in its fifth year, the competition showcases outstanding press photography taken for and use by UK media. It aims to demonstrate that even in an age of rolling television news, Internet and satellite communication, the traditional still image burns the keenest, fastest impression on the public conscience and is the most effective way to show the world the world as it really is.
Some 317 photographers based in more than 20 countries throughout Europe, Japan, South Africa, India, Australia and the United States submitted more than 7,000 photographs.
Previous winners have included Reuters photographers Nir Elias for photo essay in 2006, Yonathan Weitzman for live news in 2007, and Darren Staples for sports features in 2008.
The awards were presented in association with the British Press Photographers’ Association. Winning photographs can be viewed online and will also be exhibited in the Lyttleton foyer of the National Theatre, London, from 10 July to 10 September.
● SOURCE The Press Photographer’s Year | SLIDESHOW
Doherty won first prize in the news category with this picture:
A young girl stands with other mourners as the hearses carrying the coffins of five British soldiers are driven through the streets of Wootton Bassett. Lance Sergeant Dave Greenhalgh, Lance Corporal Darren Hicks, Kingsman Sean Dawson, Rifleman Mark Marshall and Sapper Guy Mellors were killed in separate incidents in Afghanistan’s Helmand province earlier in February. 18 February 2009.
Martinez won first prize for features with this picture:
A dog walker strolls through an earthquake-damaged district of Padang, Indonesia’s West Sumatra province. 7 October 2009.
Now in its fifth year, the competition showcases outstanding press photography taken for and use by UK media. It aims to demonstrate that even in an age of rolling television news, Internet and satellite communication, the traditional still image burns the keenest, fastest impression on the public conscience and is the most effective way to show the world the world as it really is.
Some 317 photographers based in more than 20 countries throughout Europe, Japan, South Africa, India, Australia and the United States submitted more than 7,000 photographs.
Previous winners have included Reuters photographers Nir Elias for photo essay in 2006, Yonathan Weitzman for live news in 2007, and Darren Staples for sports features in 2008.
The awards were presented in association with the British Press Photographers’ Association. Winning photographs can be viewed online and will also be exhibited in the Lyttleton foyer of the National Theatre, London, from 10 July to 10 September.
● SOURCE The Press Photographer’s Year | SLIDESHOW
Expanded digital media roles for Thomson Reuters executives
Wednesday 30 June 2010
Thomson Reuters has promoted two executives to lead a push into digital media.
Alisa Bowen, who as global head of consumer publishing had a leading role in the redesign of the ● Reuters.com website and development of mobile applications for the BlackBerry, iPhone and iPad platforms, was made global head of business operations. She joined Reuters in 2001 as a business analyst for media strategy.
Keith McAllister, former global editor of Thomson Reuters' online projects, becomes editor and publisher of consumer media. Before joining Reuters in April 2009 he was chief executive of an online syndicator and also worked for CNN where he was senior executive in charge of newsgathering. His new role will consolidate management of Reuters’ editorial and business teams.
Christoph Pleitgen, managing director of Reuters news agency, is appointed head of client operations.
The appointments follow the creation of a new team of managing editors for five editorial regions. “The new team structure reflects the growth of our news organisation, and the increasing demand we’re seeing from our customers for news and information from emerging markets,” said global managing editor Betty Wong.
In the past year Reuters has added columnists with its acquisition of commentary website Breakingviews, invested in enterprise journalism, and launched Reuters Insider, a video service for financial professionals.
A key task of the new managing editors will be to ensure Reuters makes the best use of its new investments and technologies while supporting collaboration across the various platforms.
The new managing editors, who will report directly to Wong, are:
● Caroline Drees, Middle East editor since late 2008, becomes managing editor, Middle East and Africa in mid-July and will remain based in Dubai. Drees joined Reuters in 1994. On secondment to the Reuters Foundation in 2006/7 she ran a project to help set up Iraq's first independent news agency.
● Sarah Edmonds, continental Europe editor since 2008 and deputy EMEA managing editor, becomes managing editor, Europe in mid-July and will be based in Frankfurt. She was previously bureau chief of the Nordics and Baltics, based in Stockholm. Edmonds began her Reuters career 18 years ago in her native Toronto as a financial markets and telecommunications reporter.
● Saul Hudson, Latin America editor since April 2009, becomes managing editor, Latin America in mid-July and will remain based in Sao Paulo. He previously worked with Reuters for 13 years in The Americas.
● Jack Reerink, global company news editor, becomes managing editor, United States and Canada in September and will remain based in New York. He led coverage of company news and stock markets in the Asia Pacific region from 2002 to 2007 with a short stint as Asia treasury editor. Reerink joined Reuters in 1997.
● Brian Rhoads, Americas managing editor based in New York since September 2008, will move to Hong Kong in July to become managing editor, Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters in Asia for 12 years, eight of them in China.
● SOURCE Media Bistro | Paid Content | Thomson Reuters
Alisa Bowen, who as global head of consumer publishing had a leading role in the redesign of the ● Reuters.com website and development of mobile applications for the BlackBerry, iPhone and iPad platforms, was made global head of business operations. She joined Reuters in 2001 as a business analyst for media strategy.
Keith McAllister, former global editor of Thomson Reuters' online projects, becomes editor and publisher of consumer media. Before joining Reuters in April 2009 he was chief executive of an online syndicator and also worked for CNN where he was senior executive in charge of newsgathering. His new role will consolidate management of Reuters’ editorial and business teams.
Christoph Pleitgen, managing director of Reuters news agency, is appointed head of client operations.
The appointments follow the creation of a new team of managing editors for five editorial regions. “The new team structure reflects the growth of our news organisation, and the increasing demand we’re seeing from our customers for news and information from emerging markets,” said global managing editor Betty Wong.
In the past year Reuters has added columnists with its acquisition of commentary website Breakingviews, invested in enterprise journalism, and launched Reuters Insider, a video service for financial professionals.
A key task of the new managing editors will be to ensure Reuters makes the best use of its new investments and technologies while supporting collaboration across the various platforms.
The new managing editors, who will report directly to Wong, are:
● Caroline Drees, Middle East editor since late 2008, becomes managing editor, Middle East and Africa in mid-July and will remain based in Dubai. Drees joined Reuters in 1994. On secondment to the Reuters Foundation in 2006/7 she ran a project to help set up Iraq's first independent news agency.
● Sarah Edmonds, continental Europe editor since 2008 and deputy EMEA managing editor, becomes managing editor, Europe in mid-July and will be based in Frankfurt. She was previously bureau chief of the Nordics and Baltics, based in Stockholm. Edmonds began her Reuters career 18 years ago in her native Toronto as a financial markets and telecommunications reporter.
● Saul Hudson, Latin America editor since April 2009, becomes managing editor, Latin America in mid-July and will remain based in Sao Paulo. He previously worked with Reuters for 13 years in The Americas.
● Jack Reerink, global company news editor, becomes managing editor, United States and Canada in September and will remain based in New York. He led coverage of company news and stock markets in the Asia Pacific region from 2002 to 2007 with a short stint as Asia treasury editor. Reerink joined Reuters in 1997.
● Brian Rhoads, Americas managing editor based in New York since September 2008, will move to Hong Kong in July to become managing editor, Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters in Asia for 12 years, eight of them in China.
● SOURCE Media Bistro | Paid Content | Thomson Reuters
Reuters shuffles top editorial team
Friday 21 May 2010
Mark Thompson, managing editor, Europe, Middle East and Africa, will take up the new post at the end of June. He will remain based in London and report to Chris Cramer, global editor, multimedia.
Thompson, pictured, is tasked with providing leadership, managerial oversight and strategic editorial direction of Reuters TV and pictures and their associated units such as graphics.
"I am thrilled to ask Mark to partner with me to drive the next phase of our multimedia strategy" Cramer said in an announcement on Friday. "His management experience and journalistic integrity are coupled with a keen appreciation of our client and customer needs."
Reuters restructured its multimedia division in February 2009, bringing five global editorial groups – television, pictures, Reuters financial video service, online and agency – under its remit. Earlier this month the division launched Reuters Insider, a business-to-business video news platform.
Brian Rhoads, managing editor, The Americas, is appointed to the vacant Asia managing editor’s job formerly held by Adrian Dickson. Rhoads will move to Hong Kong from New York in July to oversee editorial operations of more than 500 journalists across Asia. He will continue to report to Betty Wong, global managing editor.
Rhoads became managing editor for the Americas following Wong’s promotion two years ago. A Mandarin speaker, he was previously Beijing-based North Asia editor responsible for China, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong and China bureau chief, Shanghai bureau chief and a senior editor on news production desks in Hong Kong and Singapore.
"Brian will take his experience and talent running a complex editorial operation back to his old stomping grounds,” Wong said. “News from the established and emerging markets in Asia is of keen interest to our readers and customers and Brian will help keep Reuters competitive edge there".
● SOURCE Journalism | Web Wire
CEO’s Goldman defence threatens Reuters objectivity - NY Guild
Wednesday 28 April 2010
“Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer shook our venerable media company’s hallowed commitment to objectivity last week when he devoted a blog post to a lengthy defense of besieged Goldman Sachs, a significant client accused by federal regulators of rigging a financial instrument to favor a big customer without informing other investors,” the Guild, which represents unionised employees, said.
The chief executive wrote on his ● personal blog: “Perhaps (Goldman) will eventually be found liable of these charges, although I rather doubt it.”
What’s wrong with the top officer of a global news and information company exercising his First Amendment rights in a public forum, the Guild asked.
“First of all, it tells Reuters reporters and editors who are covering the Goldman story that the boss is on Goldman’s side. In the newspaper business, press barons and their modern-day corporate successors regularly use the editorial pages to express their opinions about controversial issues. But they have firewalls between news and editorial sections that are widely accepted in the business, even if they’re not so well understood by the public.
“Not so at TR. Without those historic firewalls, the CEO’s publicly expressed opinion could easily be taken as guidance by the reporting staff on how to cover the Goldman story. Fortunately, U.S.-based reporters and editors working on the Goldman story are Guild-covered, which enables them to chase the story without fear of retribution. But for the unprotected frontline supervisors and middle managers who oversee and direct the Goldman coverage, there’s no telling whether the CEO’s latest blog will prompt them to order up certain stories just because they fit Glocer’s opinions.
“Then, there’s public perception. The 160-year reputation of Reuters news as objective and reliable through wars, financial upheavals and natural disasters is one of the reasons clients pay as much as they do for the service and one of the reasons journalists choose to work for Thomson Reuters. Having the CEO take public stands on controversial issues can do nothing but tarnish that hard-earned reputation – and that could threaten sales.”
Debby Zabarenko, Washington-based environment correspondent and head of the Guild unit at Thomson Reuters, said: “What happened to the prized principles of maintaining the appearance and the reality of objectivity? Our members and the company’s clients deserve nothing less.”
The Guild noted that the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles say, among other things, that “the integrity, independence and freedom from bias of Thomson Reuters shall at all times be fully preserved”. Does Glocer’s defence of Goldman Sachs violate the principles? Former editor-in-chief and general manager Michael Reupke seems to think so, the Guild said. It quoted ● Reupke’s letter to The Baron on Tuesday in which he said “It is quite outrageous … for any executive of Reuters, and now surely equally of Thomson Reuters, to express an opinion on the Goldman Sachs affair. Are the Trustees too sleepy to think of stepping in here? If this had happened in my day I doubt whether he could have survived in his job.”
Zabarenko said Glocer’s “extremely inappropriate” comments “could not only tarnish the company’s reputation but that of all Reuters journalists who work hard at being objective. He should disavow his comments immediately.”
The Guild urged Schlesinger to reconsider a union suggestion in February that he issue a statement to the staff and to the public asserting that it shall be the company's policy that no high-level Thomson Reuters executive, sales executive or any other non-editorial manager shall interfere with, or even inquire about, any news story or project that is in the works or being contemplated, and direct the Board of Trustees to appoint an independent ombudsman to act as an advocate for editorial within the organisation.
“By reporting directly to the Trustees, this Editorial advocate would be unfettered by the chains of command in the corporate structure and could credibly monitor, report on and advise on matters affecting editorial integrity,” it said.
● SOURCE The Newspaper Guild of New York
Reuters hires top FT editor as global editor-at-large
Monday 01 March 2010
She will help plan Reuters editorial strategy, play a key role on forthcoming financial video service Reuters Insider, serve as Reuters’ principal television pundit, be senior contributor to Reuters.com and play a leading role in Reuters Summits and in Thomson Reuters global Newsmaker series.
Prior to her tenure as the FT’s US managing editor Freeland was the newspaper’s deputy editor in London, editor of the weekend edition, editor of FT.com, UK news editor, Moscow bureau chief and Eastern Europe correspondent. She began her career as a stringer in Ukraine, writing for the FT, The Washington Post and The Economist.
"Chrystia has proven herself an excellent reporter and an original thinker whose views are respected and listened to," said Schlesinger. "Her work will be a great complement to that done by the 2,800 journalists at Reuters worldwide."
Lionel Barber, FT editor, said: "Chrystia has been a driving force behind the FT's success in the US for the past four years, and has contributed to the FT's global profile in many other senior roles in London and Moscow. I wish her the very best with her future endeavours."
Freeland’s replacement at the FT is Gillian Tett, assistant editor for markets coverage.
● SOURCE PR Newswire
Union accuses Thomson Reuters of illegal pay cuts and Twitter curbs
Friday 05 February 2010
A union filed a complaint against Thomson Reuters alleging it is illegally imposing pay cuts and restricting what employees can write on their Twitter accounts.
In a complaint filed with the US National Labor Relations Board, the Newspaper Guild of New York charged that Thomson Reuters plans to cut wages of reporters and other employees by an average of 10 per cent this year without the union's consent.
Thomson Reuters disputed the figure, saying it is guaranteeing a 0.5 per cent increase for the more than 400 US journalists represented by the union at Reuters News. Some will get bigger raises, based on how well they do their jobs, Thomson Reuters said in a statement. "We believe such a system is fairer than a lockstep system and is essential for Reuters' future," the company said.
The union's complaint alleges that on 19 January Thomson Reuters improperly declared an impasse in the negotiations, which have been running for more than a year.
Other media companies, mostly newspapers, have been lowering wages and requiring unpaid leaves of absence during the past year as a severe advertising slump dried up their main source of revenue. The Newspaper Guild contends Reuters has not been hit as hard because it is not as dependent on advertising as newspapers.
"This dispute is really about saving quality journalism in this country," said New York Guild President Bill O'Meara. "If a healthy company like Thomson Reuters – whose CEO made almost as much in 2008 as our 420 members' annual salaries – cuts pay, it will cause less healthy news organizations to cut even more, and pretty soon many of the journalists our democracy depends on won't be able to afford to stay in the business."
The complaint also alleges that Thomson Reuters has not followed proper procedures for drawing up its policy governing its employees' use of Twitter, the online social networking tool for broadcasting brief messages.
Thomson Reuters bars its workers for posting anything "that would damage the reputation of Reuters News or Thomson Reuters." A union activist was reminded of the policy after responding to a senior manager's call to "join the (Twitter) conversation on making Reuters the best place to work" with a tweet that said: "One way to make this the best place to work is to deal honestly with Guild members."
● SOURCE The Associated Press | Newspaper Guild of New York
In a complaint filed with the US National Labor Relations Board, the Newspaper Guild of New York charged that Thomson Reuters plans to cut wages of reporters and other employees by an average of 10 per cent this year without the union's consent.
Thomson Reuters disputed the figure, saying it is guaranteeing a 0.5 per cent increase for the more than 400 US journalists represented by the union at Reuters News. Some will get bigger raises, based on how well they do their jobs, Thomson Reuters said in a statement. "We believe such a system is fairer than a lockstep system and is essential for Reuters' future," the company said.
The union's complaint alleges that on 19 January Thomson Reuters improperly declared an impasse in the negotiations, which have been running for more than a year.
Other media companies, mostly newspapers, have been lowering wages and requiring unpaid leaves of absence during the past year as a severe advertising slump dried up their main source of revenue. The Newspaper Guild contends Reuters has not been hit as hard because it is not as dependent on advertising as newspapers.
"This dispute is really about saving quality journalism in this country," said New York Guild President Bill O'Meara. "If a healthy company like Thomson Reuters – whose CEO made almost as much in 2008 as our 420 members' annual salaries – cuts pay, it will cause less healthy news organizations to cut even more, and pretty soon many of the journalists our democracy depends on won't be able to afford to stay in the business."
The complaint also alleges that Thomson Reuters has not followed proper procedures for drawing up its policy governing its employees' use of Twitter, the online social networking tool for broadcasting brief messages.
Thomson Reuters bars its workers for posting anything "that would damage the reputation of Reuters News or Thomson Reuters." A union activist was reminded of the policy after responding to a senior manager's call to "join the (Twitter) conversation on making Reuters the best place to work" with a tweet that said: "One way to make this the best place to work is to deal honestly with Guild members."
● SOURCE The Associated Press | Newspaper Guild of New York
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
News chief in Trust Principles pledge to staff after ‘minor uprising’
Friday 15 January 2010
Employees would be proud to hear how one of their executives handled hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen, the New York Post reported on Friday.
“At least, that's how Devin Wenig, CEO of the markets division, is telling it,” it said. As head of markets, Wenig leads the group’s global financial services and media businesses. If they could see a transcript of his call with the founder of SAC Capital Advisors in December, staffers would be pleased, Wenig told staff during a conference call on Wednesday, the Post said.
“The comments come on the heels of a minor uprising at the news agency, after reporters discovered that editors killed a story looking into Cohen's trades after the hedge funder called Wenig to complain,” it said in a report under the headline “Reuters CEO defense killed Cohen story”.
Reporters Matthew Goldstein and Svea Herbst-Bayliss have been looking into allegations that Cohen engaged in insider trading in the 1980s. After Cohen's complaint, Wenig called editor-in-chief David Schlesinger and the story was subsequently killed.
Wenig assured staff he would never jeopardise the company’s 150-year history or the Trust Principles, under which Reuters acts at all times with integrity, independence and freedom from bias, the Post said.
“Wenig also defended Schlesinger, saying he has 30 years of unblemished record under his belt. The CEO explained that he receives similar complaints at least once a week and always refers them to Schlesinger or the appropriate editor.”
In a conference call a week earlier, staff questioned Schlesinger about the spiked story. US media blogs characterised the call as tense and said the editor-in-chief faced down a string of angry and confused journalists demanding to know precisely why their boss spiked it. The episode was said to have severely demoralised staff.
Schlesinger denounced “false blog stories” accusing Reuters of caving in to a wealthy hedge fund manager and berated staff for “running to a blog and spreading[ing] tittle-tattle” instead of raising concerns internally. “Keep it within editorial, and don’t go running to a blog,” he was quoted as saying.
A Schlesinger e-mail to staff that found its way to blogs referred to journalists’ concern over the reports and said: “…never doubt the commitment of this company and of me to our Trust principles and journalistic ethics”.
● SOURCE New York Post
● Reuters Trust Principles
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
Thomson Reuters hires former BusinessWeek editor-in-chief
Wednesday 02 December 2009
Former BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Stephen Adler will join Thomson Reuters as editorial director of the professional division, the company said on Wednesday.
Adler, who left BusinessWeek after McGraw-Hill said it would sell the struggling magazine to Bloomberg, will design and edit news and editorial content for the Thomson Reuters division that serves legal, healthcare, science, tax and accounting professionals.
He will report to Jim Smith, who runs the professional division, and will work with David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief, who said Adler's background "is perfect for helping us create news packages that are relevant to the customers (that) the businesses within Professional serve”.
Adler became BusinessWeek's editor-in-chief in 2005. Previously he worked for 16 years at The Wall Street Journal, including posts as legal editor, investigative editor and deputy managing editor, and edited The American Lawyer magazine.
"This is an incredible opportunity with a company that's leading the way into the future of business information and media," Adler said. "I have long respected the market-leading Professional businesses and world-class Reuters news team and look forward to working with both."
Adler is among the highest-profile departures from BusinessWeek, which shed many journalists and columnists after Bloomberg said it would buy the magazine. Bloomberg completed its purchase on Tuesday.
● SOURCE Reuters
Adler, who left BusinessWeek after McGraw-Hill said it would sell the struggling magazine to Bloomberg, will design and edit news and editorial content for the Thomson Reuters division that serves legal, healthcare, science, tax and accounting professionals.
He will report to Jim Smith, who runs the professional division, and will work with David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief, who said Adler's background "is perfect for helping us create news packages that are relevant to the customers (that) the businesses within Professional serve”.
Adler became BusinessWeek's editor-in-chief in 2005. Previously he worked for 16 years at The Wall Street Journal, including posts as legal editor, investigative editor and deputy managing editor, and edited The American Lawyer magazine.
"This is an incredible opportunity with a company that's leading the way into the future of business information and media," Adler said. "I have long respected the market-leading Professional businesses and world-class Reuters news team and look forward to working with both."
Adler is among the highest-profile departures from BusinessWeek, which shed many journalists and columnists after Bloomberg said it would buy the magazine. Bloomberg completed its purchase on Tuesday.
● SOURCE Reuters
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
Reuters again suspends Australian cricket coverage over media rights
Friday 20 November 2009
Reuters has suspended coverage of Cricket Australia matches and events for a second season because of a long-running dispute over media rights and freedom of the press.
Reuters said on Friday it was unable to provide text, pictures or audio-visual coverage of the 2009/10 international season against West Indies and Pakistan after Cricket Australia refused to change its conditions of accreditation. It said it could not agree to terms which impinge on its ability to fairly and freely report on, and disseminate, news.
"We are very disappointed that, yet again, Cricket Australia is not prepared to facilitate full and impartial news coverage of their upcoming season," said Christoph Pleitgen, Thomson Reuters’ Global Head of News Agency. "We remain prepared to enter into discussions and negotiations to secure acceptable accreditation terms for our journalists and we sincerely hope that we will be able to bring news of cricket from Australia to viewers and readers all over the world but, at present, we are unable to accept the limitations that Cricket Australia is imposing."
Reuters advised clients that it "holds firmly to the belief that there can be no better promotion for any sport than the availability of timely, unbiased information to as many newspapers, websites, broadcasters and magazines as possible" and that it would welcome any move by Cricket Australia to review its decision.
Along with The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, Reuters suspended coverage of Cricket Australia events last season over the same dispute, prompting the Australian government to conduct an inquiry to find a balance between the commercial interests of sporting bodies and the rights of media to get fair access to those events.
The inquiry committee agreed that sporting organisations had a right to protect their copyright and explore business opportunities but not at the expense of media freedom. It agreed with media organisations that sporting events were of genuine public interest and urged the sporting bodies to stop using accreditation conditions to control access to events.
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters said on Friday it was unable to provide text, pictures or audio-visual coverage of the 2009/10 international season against West Indies and Pakistan after Cricket Australia refused to change its conditions of accreditation. It said it could not agree to terms which impinge on its ability to fairly and freely report on, and disseminate, news.
"We are very disappointed that, yet again, Cricket Australia is not prepared to facilitate full and impartial news coverage of their upcoming season," said Christoph Pleitgen, Thomson Reuters’ Global Head of News Agency. "We remain prepared to enter into discussions and negotiations to secure acceptable accreditation terms for our journalists and we sincerely hope that we will be able to bring news of cricket from Australia to viewers and readers all over the world but, at present, we are unable to accept the limitations that Cricket Australia is imposing."
Reuters advised clients that it "holds firmly to the belief that there can be no better promotion for any sport than the availability of timely, unbiased information to as many newspapers, websites, broadcasters and magazines as possible" and that it would welcome any move by Cricket Australia to review its decision.
Along with The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, Reuters suspended coverage of Cricket Australia events last season over the same dispute, prompting the Australian government to conduct an inquiry to find a balance between the commercial interests of sporting bodies and the rights of media to get fair access to those events.
The inquiry committee agreed that sporting organisations had a right to protect their copyright and explore business opportunities but not at the expense of media freedom. It agreed with media organisations that sporting events were of genuine public interest and urged the sporting bodies to stop using accreditation conditions to control access to events.
● SOURCE Reuters
reuters.com editor quits for new digital media project
Wednesday 18 November 2009
Adam Pasick, pictured, editor of reuters.com, masqueraded in the form of a digital avatar called Adam Reuters in the imaginary environment of Sadville in Second Life. A second Reuters journalist in the two-man virtual bureau, Eric Krangel, was called Eric Reuters.
The opening of the virtual bureau in cyberspace was described as part of Reuters’ strategy of embracing new digital platforms to deliver next generation news and information.
Pasick's new job is with an Atlantic Media project said to target global business executives and due to be launched in early 2010.
● SOURCE Fishbowl NY
Martin Nesirky appointed UN secretary-general's spokesman
Wednesday 18 November 2009
Nesirky, who served with Reuters in Moscow, Berlin, The Hague and Seoul, is currently with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna where he has been spokesman and head of press and public information since 2006.
At Reuters Nesirky covered a number of issues affecting international peace and security, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, events in the Balkans and nuclear non-proliferation issues. In Moscow he was responsible for coverage of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and as a senior editor in London handling global political news stories, including the Middle East and Africa.
At the UN he succeeds Michele Montas of Haiti who is retiring on 30 November, the world body said in a statement on Tuesday.
A stern test confronts Nesirky, his former colleague Patrick Worsnip, now Reuters bureau chief at the UN, wrote in a blog posting.
“After a high-flying career at Reuters that saw him fill senior editorial positions in London, Berlin, Moscow and Seoul, Nesirky has had some time to acclimatize to his new role by working for more than three years as spokesman for the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), based in Vienna. But the move to New York brings much more formidable challenges.
“Like any UN spokesperson, Nesirky, a Briton, will have to take into account the concerns of the 192 nations that belong to the world body. That’s 192 different governments that can get upset by something he might say. But his chief problem may be his boss Ban, whose public image, to put it mildly, could take a little burnishing. Aside from his awkward use of English, which has television producers tearing their hair, Ban has had a rough ride from hostile media that have accused him of failing to use his position to end the world’s conflicts and right its wrongs…
“Then there is the sprawling and ill-defined nature of the U.N. press and public relations operation, with different officials and factions competing for the secretary-general’s attention and waiting to pounce on any mis-step by one of the others.”
In trying to stay close to the South Korean secretary-general, Nesirky could benefit from his knowledge of the Korean language from his time in Seoul. He is also married to a South Korean, Worsnip wrote. But these advantages too could be a double-edged sword. U.N. diplomats have long complained that Ban is happiest in a Korean comfort zone and relies too much on a compatriot who serves as his deputy chief-of-staff, Kim Won-soo.
“In the world of spokespeople, the UN post may look from the outside like a dream job. But insiders were not so envious," Worsnip wrote. "Nesirky joins the world body as Ban is getting ready to try to persuade the great powers who decide these things that he has done well enough in his first five-year term of office, which ends in December 2011, that he deserves a second one. Most analysts give him a good chance, saying he has done nothing to offend key players in Washington and Beijing. But if they are wrong, Nesirky’s job could turn out to be one of his shorter assignments.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters announces new global FX analyst team
Monday 16 November 2009
Reuters announced a new six-member global FX analyst team, part of an effort to deepen foreign exchange, macroeconomic and money market news and analysis coverage.
In addition to serving as core contributors to Reuters' newly launched global treasury chatroom, The Dealing Room, they will make regular appearances on Thomson Reuters Insider's daily FX programmes and contribute market commentary to financial clients.
"Their market intelligence on currency flows, trading strategies, discussion around who's up and who's down and chewing the news with the journalists on the front line is providing a lively, compelling and addictive mix," said Stella Dawson, global editor, treasury news.
The team members are Neal Kimberley and Marco Garavello, based in London, Kevin Weir and Jim Cochrane, based in New York, Rick Lloyd, based in Singapore, and Krishna Kumar, based in Sydney.
● SOURCE CNN
In addition to serving as core contributors to Reuters' newly launched global treasury chatroom, The Dealing Room, they will make regular appearances on Thomson Reuters Insider's daily FX programmes and contribute market commentary to financial clients.
"Their market intelligence on currency flows, trading strategies, discussion around who's up and who's down and chewing the news with the journalists on the front line is providing a lively, compelling and addictive mix," said Stella Dawson, global editor, treasury news.
The team members are Neal Kimberley and Marco Garavello, based in London, Kevin Weir and Jim Cochrane, based in New York, Rick Lloyd, based in Singapore, and Krishna Kumar, based in Sydney.
● SOURCE CNN
Top editor denies Reuters has abandoned accuracy for speed
Wednesday 28 October 2009
But the news business has changed from the supposed golden age of authoritative journalism where sourcing was always rigorous and the pursuit of truth always relentless. And the nature of authority in the news business has also changed.
“Last week I was told that Reuters has lost its ethical bearings,” says Maguire, editor, political and general news. “You’ve sacrificed the sacred tenet of accuracy by rushing to publish information without checking if it is true. Your credibility has suffered, the value of your brand will wither and the service you offer to clients has been devalued, I heard.”
Writing in a Reuters Editors blog, Maguire concedes “It was a meaty accusation, especially as it came in the midst of a debate on ethics in journalism held at the London home of Thomson Reuters, the parent of the Reuters news organisation. The charge came from former Reuters journalists and a senior member of the trustees body that monitors Reuters compliance with its core ethical principles.”
The accusations concerned two inaccurate reports by CNN and Sky News that Reuters picked up.
“It is grating for any journalist to publish information that turns out to be incorrect,” says Maguire, who specialised in eastern Europe in the 1990s covering the fall of Yugoslavia and later conflict in the Middle East, particularly Iraq. “Even if we can say that the original error was made elsewhere some of the flak hits those who replicate the mistake. After all, those who republish a libel are as liable for it as its originator.
“So why did we not check first and publish later?
“The answer goes to the heart of how the news business has changed, how the notion of authoritativeness has altered and how Reuters journalists interpret the values they live by.
“But first let's scotch one myth. Embarrassing publicity notwithstanding, it is relatively rare for Reuters to publish what turns out to be an erroneous report by another news organisation. Since we instituted our current policy on 'pick-ups,' as they are known in the trade, the level of 'echoed mistakes,' has neither grown nor fallen.
“To provide a complete service to our customers our policy is to pick up stories of significance that are being carried by normally reliable media that are in a position to know what they are reporting.” Hence the decision to quote CNN, which has a good record on reporting its own home turf, or Sky, which has broken news on the Lockerbie bomber story and follows it closely. “We protect our reputation by carefully acknowledging the source of the information and speedily checking its veracity.”
Hundreds of times every day Reuters journalists decline to go with a story running on local media because it smells wrong, is trivial, or both, Maguire says. “Mostly that decision is vindicated. The old school would have it that our policy is a failure of journalism. Yet walking the right line between publishing everything and publishing nothing actually requires a finer exercise of judgment. Better journalism, in other words.
“The counter-argument is that we should only publish when we have 100 percent certainty from our own sources. That may be possible for a news organisation with a longer publishing timescale, such as a newspaper, or a periodical magazine. Yet even they, with online arms that are increasingly as ‘real-time’ as Reuters, the Associated Press or Bloomberg, face the same challenges of dealing with fast-breaking stories as the news agencies. With the advent of the Internet has come a cacophony of online voices that amplify and accelerate information, frequently dropping reference to where it originated or how it first became known. In that environment readers look to news services like Reuters to tell them what is known, and how it is known, with clarity and speed, regardless of whether we originated the story or not. In a complex, fast-moving world, no news organisation, no matter how well-resourced, can be first to report everything. All of us target the news we want to break and rely on others, who are sometimes allies and sometimes competitors, to paint their part of the picture."
Maguire asks whether that approach has destroyed the relationship of trust that clients and readers have with Reuters. His response: “The question supposes there was once a golden age of authoritative journalism where sourcing was always rigorous and the pursuit of truth always relentless. History suggests otherwise. Current anxiety over journalistic values is often a proxy for broader worry over the health of the media industry. Declining revenues have driven cost cutting that has threatened, many feel, the standards of journalism. Reuters is stressing speed for fear of losing its audience, critics say, and will do so at the expense of its reputation for accuracy.
“Yet our business has always put a premium on speed, and given that we are one of very few global news organisations that is expanding its staff during the downturn we feel we are doing the right things to maintain our audience.”
The nature of authority in the news business has also changed, Maguire says. “Real-time readers understand breaking news is contingent, uncertain and provisional. Exclusivity evaporates fast as aggregators, citers and plagiarists disseminate the fruits of others’ reporting toil. Respect is won by breaking news and by operating with clear rules and standards. But it also come from guiding readers carefully to the reports of others, binding the audience in with compelling packages of conversation, illumination and curated content.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Speed over accuracy: ex-correspondents raise concerns
Monday 26 October 2009
Former correspondents criticised Reuters’ reporting standards, raising doubts about the primacy of speed over accuracy in an increasingly competitive market.
In at least two examples, Reuters reported inaccurate stories from other media without checking primary sources first, the website Journalism.co.uk said in a report on What Price the News?, a debate hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the company's Canary Wharf, London offices on Thursday 22 October.
Has fact-checking and editing become less of a priority in an age of cost-cutting and “personal” journalism? What are the consequences for news organisations’ commitment to accuracy and freedom from bias? Those were two of the questions billed by the company in advance of the debate, which was introduced by Dean Wright, global editor, ethics, innovation and news standards. Others were: Are Western standards of news ethics and standards necessarily correct? Should there be a global standard for what constitutes proper journalism ethics?
This month Reuters initially published a report, first broadcast by Sky News, that the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, had died, until his lawyer corrected it.
Another inaccurate story was CNN's report on a US Coast Guard training exercise on the anniversary of September 11 this year which was wrongly claimed to be a gun battle.
Former Reuters journalist Paul Iredale, speaking from the audience, said he was deeply concerned and sad about what he heard during the debate. "In Reuters it seems to have gone to speed rather than accuracy," he said. "What we used to say about Reuters was we got it last, but we got it right. I don't think that is the case now."
Sean Maguire, global editor, political and general news, said Reuters was completely transparent when the stories were found to be untrue. "When we saw it was wrong, we said we were wrong," he said. "Because Sky had been a good source on the [al-Megrahi death report] story we reported it. We very quickly said what they said was nonsense."
Former correspondent Colin Bickler said from the audience that he believed source-checking standards were slipping in the rush to get the story up. "I worked for Reuters for 28 years and if I had pulled that excuse I would have been shot. It is because it can move the markets it needs to be checked. I'm in shock," Journalism.co.uk reported him saying.
Times have changed, said Maguire. "There is a premium on speed and we will put a story out and say 'this is what we know so far,'" he said. "The business model has changed (…) but we don't recklessly report what we think is wrong."
● SOURCE Journalism.co.uk
In at least two examples, Reuters reported inaccurate stories from other media without checking primary sources first, the website Journalism.co.uk said in a report on What Price the News?, a debate hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the company's Canary Wharf, London offices on Thursday 22 October.
Has fact-checking and editing become less of a priority in an age of cost-cutting and “personal” journalism? What are the consequences for news organisations’ commitment to accuracy and freedom from bias? Those were two of the questions billed by the company in advance of the debate, which was introduced by Dean Wright, global editor, ethics, innovation and news standards. Others were: Are Western standards of news ethics and standards necessarily correct? Should there be a global standard for what constitutes proper journalism ethics?
This month Reuters initially published a report, first broadcast by Sky News, that the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, had died, until his lawyer corrected it.
Another inaccurate story was CNN's report on a US Coast Guard training exercise on the anniversary of September 11 this year which was wrongly claimed to be a gun battle.
Former Reuters journalist Paul Iredale, speaking from the audience, said he was deeply concerned and sad about what he heard during the debate. "In Reuters it seems to have gone to speed rather than accuracy," he said. "What we used to say about Reuters was we got it last, but we got it right. I don't think that is the case now."
Sean Maguire, global editor, political and general news, said Reuters was completely transparent when the stories were found to be untrue. "When we saw it was wrong, we said we were wrong," he said. "Because Sky had been a good source on the [al-Megrahi death report] story we reported it. We very quickly said what they said was nonsense."
Former correspondent Colin Bickler said from the audience that he believed source-checking standards were slipping in the rush to get the story up. "I worked for Reuters for 28 years and if I had pulled that excuse I would have been shot. It is because it can move the markets it needs to be checked. I'm in shock," Journalism.co.uk reported him saying.
Times have changed, said Maguire. "There is a premium on speed and we will put a story out and say 'this is what we know so far,'" he said. "The business model has changed (…) but we don't recklessly report what we think is wrong."
● SOURCE Journalism.co.uk
Cambridge honours 'flamboyant, vibrant' David Chipp
Sunday 25 October 2009
Chipp, who died in September 2008 aged 81, was a correspondent and editor from 1950 until 1969 when he left to become editor-in-chief of the Press Association, national news agency of the UK and Ireland. As an old China hand, he regarded the 30 months he spent in Peking for Reuters from 1956 to 1958 as the high point of his life.
A graduate of King’s, he was a benefactor of its chapel and an enthusiastic supporter of its boat club. After retirement his many interests included a period as director of the Reuter Foundation.
The provost of King’s, Professor Ross Harrison, recalled Chipp’s puckish charm and said more than £20,000 had been raised through donations in his memory for the college’s supplementary exhibition fund to provide welfare support for students and books.
After Saturday's Evensong a reception given by the provost provided the occasion for the launch of Mao’s Toe: Memoirs of David Chipp, A Serious Correspondent, published posthumously by his estate in a private edition of 500 copies. The title derives from two compliments paid to Chipp by the Chinese leadership.
● In October 1956, when he was the first non-communist Western correspondent resident in Peking since the 1949 communist takeover, Chipp inadvertently stepped back onto the foot of chairman Mao Zedong. The Great Helmsman’s immediate response was one of huge amusement. He roared with laughter and afterwards referred to Chipp as “Lacquered Defender of Morals”. To this day, there are still a few people in China who refer to him as “the Englishman who trod on Chairman Mao’s toe and got away with it”, Chipp recounts in the book.
● The second part of the title is drawn from a remark by premier Zhou Enlai who was interviewed by Chipp and who apparently told a colleague, “We like Mr Chipp. He is very interested in everything about China; he gets a lot wrong; and is always laughing and joking. But he is a very serious correspondent.” Chipp was delighted and later wrote: “A serious correspondent: as a reporter, I find that the greatest compliment I have ever been paid, and can think of no better epitaph.”
Reuters people at the service included Diana Drayton, Robert Elphick, John Entwisle, Anthony Grey, Adam Kellett-Long, Barry May, Michael Neale, Michael Nelson, Manfred Pagel, Timothy Pearce, John Ransom, David Schlesinger, David Sells, Peter Smith, Stephen Somerville, Tom Thomson and Donald Read, author of Reuters’ official history, The Power of News.
● Mao's Toe: Memoirs of David Chipp, A Serious Correspondent
New website trumpets firsts and exclusives
Wednesday 21 October 2009
Reuters has launched a new website to showcase news firsts and exclusives. Reuters Firsts promotes market-moving coverage where Reuters was first or alone with the story.
The collection of winning coverage is organised by topic and geography. Highlights include:
● Categorisation of first and exclusive summaries by asset class and region
● Extensive archive that offers the ability to search past wins by date, region and country
● Ability to print and e-mail a first or exclusive summary to share with clients and colleagues.
Key facts on coverage as well as a timeline of major wins over the last decade are also available.
The site includes statistics on Reuters coverage including more than 9,400 market-moving firsts and exclusives each year.
“Reporting on more asset classes and news genres than any other media organization, Reuters journalists aim to connect the dots on the stories that matter most to financial and media professionals around the globe," it says. Output is over:
● 2.5 million unique news stories a year
● 855,000 alerts per year
● 1,700 picture images per day
● 52,000 video stories per year.
Reuters overall total message volume has risen nearly 35 per cent over the past four years. Value is added to news coverage with
● 5,000 polls a year covering economic indicators, interest rate moves, stocks, bonds, currency, commodities markets, FX rates and asset allocation plans by fund managers
● 6,000 analyses a year covering companies, industry sectors, market trends, political risk and financial industry developments
● Expert columns which provide context and opinion on key areas such as commodities and energy, macroeconomics, technology, European policy, emerging markets and M&A.
More than 51 million people visit Reuters web sites each month.
Reuters scores over 18,000 interviews a year with CEOs, central bankers, finance ministers, and politicians.
● Reuters Firsts
● SOURCE Reuters
The collection of winning coverage is organised by topic and geography. Highlights include:
● Categorisation of first and exclusive summaries by asset class and region
● Extensive archive that offers the ability to search past wins by date, region and country
● Ability to print and e-mail a first or exclusive summary to share with clients and colleagues.
Key facts on coverage as well as a timeline of major wins over the last decade are also available.
The site includes statistics on Reuters coverage including more than 9,400 market-moving firsts and exclusives each year.
“Reporting on more asset classes and news genres than any other media organization, Reuters journalists aim to connect the dots on the stories that matter most to financial and media professionals around the globe," it says. Output is over:
● 2.5 million unique news stories a year
● 855,000 alerts per year
● 1,700 picture images per day
● 52,000 video stories per year.
Reuters overall total message volume has risen nearly 35 per cent over the past four years. Value is added to news coverage with
● 5,000 polls a year covering economic indicators, interest rate moves, stocks, bonds, currency, commodities markets, FX rates and asset allocation plans by fund managers
● 6,000 analyses a year covering companies, industry sectors, market trends, political risk and financial industry developments
● Expert columns which provide context and opinion on key areas such as commodities and energy, macroeconomics, technology, European policy, emerging markets and M&A.
More than 51 million people visit Reuters web sites each month.
Reuters scores over 18,000 interviews a year with CEOs, central bankers, finance ministers, and politicians.
● Reuters Firsts
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters sets new editorial appraisal objectives
Tuesday 20 October 2009
"What do we expect? That Reuters journalists will own the big stories, focus on higher value content, be first and handle news quickly, better serve customer needs, work as a team and be innovative," global managing editor Betty Wong, pictured, said in a note to staff.
"Rather than be prescriptive in what these mean for journalists, the NLT [News Leadership Team] asks managers to keep the overarching themes in mind as well as editorial targets when building individual development objectives."
The broad objectives for journalists' and editorial managers' twice-yearly appraisals are:
1. Own the big stories, emphasise higher-value content
2. Be first, handle news quickly
3. Understand customer needs
4. Teamwork
5. Innovate
6. Lead, communicate, be a face for Reuters/Thomson Reuters
7. Stay within budget targets.
The news leadership team is a steering group of senior editorial management. It sets editorial's operational agenda. The team's members are:
● Kelly Anderson, global head of communications
● Sarah Cavanagh, head of human resources
● John Clarke, global editor, TV/assistant US publisher, visuals
● Jackie Combine, global head of finance, editorial and content
● Chris Cramer, global editor of multimedia
● Stella Dawson, editor, treasury news
● Adrian Dickson, managing editor, Asia
● Thomas Kim, senior vice president and deputy general counsel, markets division
● Michael Lawrence, global head, news specialists
● Richard Mably, commodities & energy editor
● Sean Maguire, global editor, political & general news
● Andrew Meagher, global head real time financial publishing
● Jack Reerink, global editor, company news
● Gary Regenstreif, global editor, domestic news services
● Brian Rhoads, managing editor, Americas
● David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief
● Alex Spinelli, head of news technology
● Thomas Szlukovenyi, global editor, pictures
● Mark Thomson, managing editor, Europe, Middle East and Africa
● Betty Wong, global managing editor
● Dean Wright, global editor, ethics, innovation and news values.
● SOURCE Reuters
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
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
Treasury news editing in shake-up as part of TR integration
Monday 05 October 2009
The reason is a drive for deeper specialisation and a need to “gear ourselves up for the rapidly changing financial and competitive landscape”, according to an internal memo by Michael Lawrence, global editor, news specialists, Stella Dawson, editor, treasury news, and Keith Mullin, editor in chief, IFR markets.
Treasury news editing is to be divided into economics and financial markets. A new global financial markets editor will be appointed to join the team of global editors with a brief “to elevate our markets coverage; work closely with the business to identify our strategic goals and commercial requirements; deliver on strategic priorities, from communities to market commentators and intra-day analysis; and accelerate our integration with IFR and the other professional teams”.
In what they called a big shift in the way Treasury is structured, the three editors said that as part of the restructuring existing treasury editors will become economics editors to better reflect their area of focus. “We expect them to work very closely with the markets team to retain the investor and markets focus in our coverage of economics and policy,” they said. At the same time, the loans teams with Reuters Loan Pricing Corporation and IFR are being combined and a new loans editor is to be appointed.
“Now that we are One Editorial, we want these teams working together and, when we do, they will be folded under the markets umbrella.
“By bringing markets, RLPC and IFR together under the one specialist editor, we will emphasize the centrality of markets to our coverage – it is the very cornerstone of what we do and the focus for the majority of our financial clients.”
The editors said the restructuring does not reflect any dissatisfaction with the current team or the Treasury news editors. “It’s the result of having more resources with the addition of IFR, the fierce competitive environment, new opportunities that we can explore with the business divisions and the need to accelerate the changes that are already under way. There is a huge amount of work to be done to implement integration and new initiatives such as commentary, communities and chat rooms. Quite simply, we need the additional bandwidth and focus to do that.”
● SOURCE Reuters
Live blogging draws new readers to Reuters
Monday 05 October 2009
Live blogging – bite-sized snippets filed directly by journalists to the Internet – is thriving at Reuters, drawing thousands of new readers to coverage.
Two recent major stories, the G20 summit in Pittsburgh and the German elections, provided opportunities for correspondents to publish directly and almost instantly.
To see what it looks like ● click http://live.reuters.com/Event/G20_Pittsburgh, which featured tweets from correspondents Steve Holland, Michelle Nichols and Sumeet Desai alongside links to key stories, pictures and video as the news developed.
As G20 wound down, bureaus in Germany ramped up a live blog of their national elections, says Richard Baum, global editor, consumer media.
“Live blogs are fast becoming popular with journalists – and readers – because they allow almost instant publishing of any type of media,” Baum says. “And because the tools integrate easily with Twitter, they allow reporters in the field to publish directly from apps on their BlackBerry or iPhone. The pages update live without the need for a manual refresh, giving readers a true multimedia wire.”
● Reuters.com editor Adam Pasick, who edited the live blog from Pittsburgh, said: "Multimedia coverage of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh was perhaps the best example yet of how the many strands of Reuters journalism can be pulled together into a rich, cohesive package for our readers and clients.
“At the height of the protests in Pittsburgh on Thursday evening, the page was drawing as many as three visitors a second. Over the whole event, more than 78,000 people visited the blog, which was also embedded in our main G20 page.”
The German blog was the idea of Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin who had “about 10 different contributors" including Reuters Television.
In the UK, journalists have been live blogging Prime Minister Gordon Brown's recent travels and the Labour Party conference.
● SOURCE Reuters
Two recent major stories, the G20 summit in Pittsburgh and the German elections, provided opportunities for correspondents to publish directly and almost instantly.
To see what it looks like ● click http://live.reuters.com/Event/G20_Pittsburgh, which featured tweets from correspondents Steve Holland, Michelle Nichols and Sumeet Desai alongside links to key stories, pictures and video as the news developed.
As G20 wound down, bureaus in Germany ramped up a live blog of their national elections, says Richard Baum, global editor, consumer media.
“Live blogs are fast becoming popular with journalists – and readers – because they allow almost instant publishing of any type of media,” Baum says. “And because the tools integrate easily with Twitter, they allow reporters in the field to publish directly from apps on their BlackBerry or iPhone. The pages update live without the need for a manual refresh, giving readers a true multimedia wire.”
● Reuters.com editor Adam Pasick, who edited the live blog from Pittsburgh, said: "Multimedia coverage of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh was perhaps the best example yet of how the many strands of Reuters journalism can be pulled together into a rich, cohesive package for our readers and clients.
“At the height of the protests in Pittsburgh on Thursday evening, the page was drawing as many as three visitors a second. Over the whole event, more than 78,000 people visited the blog, which was also embedded in our main G20 page.”
The German blog was the idea of Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin who had “about 10 different contributors" including Reuters Television.
In the UK, journalists have been live blogging Prime Minister Gordon Brown's recent travels and the Labour Party conference.
● SOURCE Reuters
Media must find own path to prosperity – David Schlesinger
Tuesday 08 September 2009
Forget old media and new media: each media organisation must find its own path to prosperity by engaging with its audience, using technology effectively and keeping its reporting relevant, editor-in-chief David Schlesinger says.
"We need to stop thinking about a division between new media and traditional media," he told the Chinese news agency Xinhua in an interview ahead of the world media summit to be held in Beijing on 7-10 October.
Schlesinger said media organisations that consider themselves "traditional" face significant changes in their business models and in the reading or viewing habits of their audience.
Therefore, all media organisations – if they are to survive and prosper – must use good journalism, technology and new techniques to engage with their audience and stay relevant.
Asked about the challenges Reuters is facing, Schlesinger said the financial crisis has been a dominant factor this year.
"It has been an important and exciting story to cover, and it has also affected all of our clients, whether they are in financial services, in the media or individual consumers," he added.
Reuters, the first foreign news agency to operate in China after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, has 24 correspondents stationed in the country with a much larger local support team working on the ground.
Schlesinger first visited China in 1979. He joined Reuters as a correspondent in Hong Kong in 1987. From 1989 to 1995 he managed editorial operations in Taiwan, China and the Greater China region.
● SOURCE Xinhua
"We need to stop thinking about a division between new media and traditional media," he told the Chinese news agency Xinhua in an interview ahead of the world media summit to be held in Beijing on 7-10 October.
Schlesinger said media organisations that consider themselves "traditional" face significant changes in their business models and in the reading or viewing habits of their audience.
Therefore, all media organisations – if they are to survive and prosper – must use good journalism, technology and new techniques to engage with their audience and stay relevant.
Asked about the challenges Reuters is facing, Schlesinger said the financial crisis has been a dominant factor this year.
"It has been an important and exciting story to cover, and it has also affected all of our clients, whether they are in financial services, in the media or individual consumers," he added.
Reuters, the first foreign news agency to operate in China after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, has 24 correspondents stationed in the country with a much larger local support team working on the ground.
Schlesinger first visited China in 1979. He joined Reuters as a correspondent in Hong Kong in 1987. From 1989 to 1995 he managed editorial operations in Taiwan, China and the Greater China region.
● SOURCE Xinhua
Reuters repositioning news for 21st century
Tuesday 08 September 2009
Reuters is no longer a traditional wire service. It is one of the largest multimedia news agencies in the world, he said in a recent interview.
“We're committed to enhancing our news file with considerable investments in commentary and investigative journalism and by melding the work of correspondents into a file that out-smarts the competition. We are a strong and diverse global network with a formidable line up of journalists who are able to make connections that other news organisations don't have the resources to do.
“We are investing now towards repositioning our news for the twenty-first century in an effort to anticipate the future needs of our clients -- many of whom are now of the Google/YouTube generation.
Reuters has invested $1 billion in "innovation and next-generation information products" this year. The centrepiece of this effort is Project Insider, an interactive TV service that delivers personalised financial news and insight direct to clients’ desktop and mobile devices.
“This is something no one else is doing and we believe it transforms the viewing experience from a passive, one-way broadcast model into an interactive and powerfully personalised medium. Think narrowcasting rather than broadcasting.
“Insider has been developed by some scary smart people inside the company and will leverage exclusive Reuters content and the editorial expertise from our 2,700 journalists around the world, packaged in a way that makes the most sense for our clients. Our programming will include market outlooks, live newsmaker interviews, deep technical analysis and market reactions to important events. We reckon that a combination of Reuters content with targeted content from third party financial information providers will enable our clients to cut through all the noise and clutter of existing financial news programming and receive a single, complete source of information.”
Cramer, former head of CNN International, says Thomson Reuters has done a great job of turning challenges into opportunity, especially with regards to its innovation strategy.
“In my opinion, great companies are defined in challenging times and it takes a great company to have the courage to invest in a tough period. Across the company we are investing a remarkable $1 billion this year in innovation and next-generation information products."
● SOURCE MediaBistro
Reuters taps ex-NYT man for new ‘enterprise' job
Monday 17 August 2009
Based in New York, he will commission and edit stories that meet the challenge of engaging a diverse global Reuters readership in an increasingly competitive media environment. The aim is to deliver more groundbreaking and innovative stories and multimedia packages for customers throughout the world.
At The New York Times Impoco helped to redesign and relaunch the Saturday and Sunday business sections. He has also served as deputy editor at Condé Nast magazine Portfolio, assistant managing editor at Fortune magazine and executive editor at Men's Journal and was a Tokyo-based reporter for The Associated Press and Tokyo Bureau Chief for U.S. News & World Report.
"Jim's proven ability and experience in generating fresh, innovative feature stories, coupled with his deep understanding of our clients' needs, make him an enormous asset for Reuters," said Howard Goller, editor, political and general news, US & Canada. "We are proud of our reputation for accuracy and speed, and it is important in this increasingly competitive journalism market that we maintain our edge for clients who rely on us to be first with news, trends and analysis in the world of business and finance. Jim will help us lead the way."
Impoco said: "Reuters is an impressively large and influential platform, and I am sincerely flattered that they have asked me to try my hand at this. To be able to shape feature stories at an organization with Reuters’ reach is a dream job. No matter what happens to our industry, Reuters is certain to remain in the thick of it."
● SOURCE PR Newswire
Reuters correspondent to head White House association
Tuesday 21 July 2009
Reuters’ White House correspondent Caren Bohan has been elected next president of the White House Correspondents Association.
She will begin her one-year term as president in mid-2011 after serving as vice president for a year. The WHCA’s mission is to push for media access to the president and provide input on coverage and travel logistics for journalists who cover the White House beat. It also hosts an annual dinner with the president.
Bohan joined Reuters in 1992 and has covered the White House since 2003. Previously she was part of a team of reporters who won an award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for their coverage of President Bush's 2002 shakeup of his economic team.
Howard Goller, editor for US & Canada political & general news, said: "We are pleased, proud and honored. This is wonderful recognition for Caren, our White House team and Reuters."
The first Reuters correspondent to head the WHCA was Ralph Harris in 1979. He died on 24 December 2008 aged 87.
She will begin her one-year term as president in mid-2011 after serving as vice president for a year. The WHCA’s mission is to push for media access to the president and provide input on coverage and travel logistics for journalists who cover the White House beat. It also hosts an annual dinner with the president.
Bohan joined Reuters in 1992 and has covered the White House since 2003. Previously she was part of a team of reporters who won an award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for their coverage of President Bush's 2002 shakeup of his economic team.
Howard Goller, editor for US & Canada political & general news, said: "We are pleased, proud and honored. This is wonderful recognition for Caren, our White House team and Reuters."
The first Reuters correspondent to head the WHCA was Ralph Harris in 1979. He died on 24 December 2008 aged 87.
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
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
FT man joins Reuters as commentary editor, banking chief
Wednesday 15 April 2009
The Financial Times’ banking editor, Peter Thal Larsen, is leaving after 10 years to join Reuters’ commentary service.
He will become the London-based European editor of the commentary team, commissioning and editing comment articles, as well as taking overall charge of global banking coverage.
Thal Larsen will report to Jonathan Ford, editor of the new commentary team at Reuters which is developing its global commentary output and expanding its range of columns and blogs.
Before becoming FT banking editor he worked in New York from 2000 to 2004, first as the paper's Wall Street correspondent and later as US communications editor, covering the media and telecoms.
● SOURCE The Guardian
He will become the London-based European editor of the commentary team, commissioning and editing comment articles, as well as taking overall charge of global banking coverage.
Thal Larsen will report to Jonathan Ford, editor of the new commentary team at Reuters which is developing its global commentary output and expanding its range of columns and blogs.
Before becoming FT banking editor he worked in New York from 2000 to 2004, first as the paper's Wall Street correspondent and later as US communications editor, covering the media and telecoms.
● SOURCE The Guardian
Reuters rolls out 'studio in a suitcase’
Wednesday 08 April 2009
Reuters is kitting out journalists with a portable multimedia suite that has been dubbed “studio in a suitcase”.
It comprises a Tandberg Edge 95 video camera, microphone, lights, tripod and monitor.
Some 60 bureaux in the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia will be the first to trial the kit, which allows users to connect to their nearest production centre via the web.
The company is also distributing 100 Flip video cameras and experimenting with other news-gathering tools.
One immediate use for the technology will be worldwide production of Reuters Insider, a financial television service for 500,000 professional clients due to be launched in June. It will provide live and searchable financial markets coverage, analysis and breaking news.
Multi-media studios for the new service have been built in New York, London and Hong Kong.
Reuters Insider managing editor Mike Stepanovich said the new kit would complement the rollout of cameras with a wider distribution of lower quality webcam capabilities. He said this would allow the company to reach all of its 2,700 journalists worldwide.
Global editor of multimedia Chris Cramer told Press Gazette: "Long gone are the days where you spend scarce money in studio infrastructure. Long gone are the days when you spend limited money on satellite transmission. Broadband is the way these days and physics is on our side here."
Cramer said the streets of New York and London were full of mobile phone owners capable of gathering news and content: "The business of gathering pictures is not rocket science anymore."
Professional and consumer audiences were already dealing with all forms of media, with major implications for the industry.
"Smart journalists are going to realise we don’t have an option to do one thing," he said. "We need to get the skills to work in media and not just one form of media. It doesn’t mean we can’t specialise in writing or we can’t specialise in camera work ... but successful journalists in the future are going to have to be able to cope with a variety of media and publishing roles."
● SOURCE Press Gazette
It comprises a Tandberg Edge 95 video camera, microphone, lights, tripod and monitor.
Some 60 bureaux in the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia will be the first to trial the kit, which allows users to connect to their nearest production centre via the web.
The company is also distributing 100 Flip video cameras and experimenting with other news-gathering tools.
One immediate use for the technology will be worldwide production of Reuters Insider, a financial television service for 500,000 professional clients due to be launched in June. It will provide live and searchable financial markets coverage, analysis and breaking news.
Multi-media studios for the new service have been built in New York, London and Hong Kong.
Reuters Insider managing editor Mike Stepanovich said the new kit would complement the rollout of cameras with a wider distribution of lower quality webcam capabilities. He said this would allow the company to reach all of its 2,700 journalists worldwide.
Global editor of multimedia Chris Cramer told Press Gazette: "Long gone are the days where you spend scarce money in studio infrastructure. Long gone are the days when you spend limited money on satellite transmission. Broadband is the way these days and physics is on our side here."
Cramer said the streets of New York and London were full of mobile phone owners capable of gathering news and content: "The business of gathering pictures is not rocket science anymore."
Professional and consumer audiences were already dealing with all forms of media, with major implications for the industry.
"Smart journalists are going to realise we don’t have an option to do one thing," he said. "We need to get the skills to work in media and not just one form of media. It doesn’t mean we can’t specialise in writing or we can’t specialise in camera work ... but successful journalists in the future are going to have to be able to cope with a variety of media and publishing roles."
● SOURCE Press Gazette
Reuters names new global online editor
Tuesday 07 April 2009
Reuters has created the new post of global editor for online and appointed Keith McAllister, a former CEO of a syndicated online content company, to the job.
He will be part of the multimedia and consumer media management teams and will oversee editorial and production of all online operations for Reuters News. He will be based in New York and report to Chris Cramer, global editor, multimedia.
McAllister will also be responsible for the packaging, programming and publishing of editorial content for Reuters News websites and retail customers.
The website Paid Content said his first priority will be to create multimedia products for existing and online operations in order to meet the increased challenges from Bloomberg and Associated Press, which have become more aggressive on the digital and video front.
“Case in point, at its annual meeting on Monday, the AP said it would ramp up e-commerce and mobile news products as it looks to find ways of drawing in more revenue.”
McAllister previously worked for online content firm Mochila, and before that was at CNN for 17 years, most recently as executive vice president and managing editor for national news gathering.
Cramer is a former president of CNN International. He joined Reuters last September with the task of overseeing multimedia projects including the reuters.com website and acting as the main liaison between the news organisation and media business.
● SOURCE Washington Post / Paid Content
He will be part of the multimedia and consumer media management teams and will oversee editorial and production of all online operations for Reuters News. He will be based in New York and report to Chris Cramer, global editor, multimedia.
McAllister will also be responsible for the packaging, programming and publishing of editorial content for Reuters News websites and retail customers.
The website Paid Content said his first priority will be to create multimedia products for existing and online operations in order to meet the increased challenges from Bloomberg and Associated Press, which have become more aggressive on the digital and video front.
“Case in point, at its annual meeting on Monday, the AP said it would ramp up e-commerce and mobile news products as it looks to find ways of drawing in more revenue.”
McAllister previously worked for online content firm Mochila, and before that was at CNN for 17 years, most recently as executive vice president and managing editor for national news gathering.
Cramer is a former president of CNN International. He joined Reuters last September with the task of overseeing multimedia projects including the reuters.com website and acting as the main liaison between the news organisation and media business.
● SOURCE Washington Post / Paid Content
Thomson Reuters staff vote for industrial action
Monday 06 April 2009
Journalists at Thomson Reuters’ financial news operation have voted for industrial action in an attempt to protect their current working conditions, The Guardian reported on Monday.
Members of the National Union of Journalists who used to work for Thomson Financial News took part in secret ballot, with 59 per cent of the 30 staff who took part in the ballot voting in favour of strike action and 83 per cent in favour of some form of industrial action.
Before the April 2008 merger, staff working for Thomson Financial News were on a nine-day fortnight. They are unhappy at a plan to introduce a 10-day fortnight.
"Our members at the previous Thomson's group had a nine-day fortnight as part of their contracts to recognise the stress of the job and the anti-social shift pattern," said the NUJ head of publishing, Barry Fitzpatrick. "They now play their part in making huge profits for an extraordinarily successful company."
NUJ members are understood to be meeting next week to plan their next move, The Guardian said.
A spokeswoman for Thomson Reuters said the planned rota change was part of a plan to create common working practices across the company.
"Reuters is deeply disappointed that a majority of former Thomson Financial News staff have voted for industrial action over changes to shift patterns in the London newsroom," the spokeswoman added.
"Given the challenges facing the industry and the innovative investments Reuters is making throughout the newsroom, the ballot will only prolong a dispute that is unnecessary and ill-considered and one which involves less than 10 per cent of the London newsroom staff."
● SOURCE The Guardian
Members of the National Union of Journalists who used to work for Thomson Financial News took part in secret ballot, with 59 per cent of the 30 staff who took part in the ballot voting in favour of strike action and 83 per cent in favour of some form of industrial action.
Before the April 2008 merger, staff working for Thomson Financial News were on a nine-day fortnight. They are unhappy at a plan to introduce a 10-day fortnight.
"Our members at the previous Thomson's group had a nine-day fortnight as part of their contracts to recognise the stress of the job and the anti-social shift pattern," said the NUJ head of publishing, Barry Fitzpatrick. "They now play their part in making huge profits for an extraordinarily successful company."
NUJ members are understood to be meeting next week to plan their next move, The Guardian said.
A spokeswoman for Thomson Reuters said the planned rota change was part of a plan to create common working practices across the company.
"Reuters is deeply disappointed that a majority of former Thomson Financial News staff have voted for industrial action over changes to shift patterns in the London newsroom," the spokeswoman added.
"Given the challenges facing the industry and the innovative investments Reuters is making throughout the newsroom, the ballot will only prolong a dispute that is unnecessary and ill-considered and one which involves less than 10 per cent of the London newsroom staff."
● SOURCE The Guardian
Reuters boosts Japanese news with Kyodo content
Wednesday 25 March 2009
Reuters is to boost its Japanese News Service with content supplied by Japan’s biggest news agency, Kyodo.
Starting on 1 April, the Japanese News Service’s 12,000 subscribers will receive an additional 800 daily headlines. The new content will include deeper coverage of market regulators in Japan and internationally, emerging markets, Asian loan markets and Japanese politics, as well as faster real-time delivery of major macroeconomic data and announcements from the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. The partnership with Kyodo will also ensure expanded coverage of the Japanese prime minister’s office and key ministries.
“We are going through dramatic change in financial markets,” said Mark Smith, Thomson Reuters’ markets senior company officer in Japan. ”Our customers require now more than ever trusted, relevant and timely news and analysis of domestic and international events. We see a tremendous opportunity to meet this increasing demand.”
Reuters opened its first office in Japan in 1872. Reuters Japanese News was launched in 1985 as ReuterScoop, one of a number of local language news services.
● SOURCE Media Newsline
Starting on 1 April, the Japanese News Service’s 12,000 subscribers will receive an additional 800 daily headlines. The new content will include deeper coverage of market regulators in Japan and internationally, emerging markets, Asian loan markets and Japanese politics, as well as faster real-time delivery of major macroeconomic data and announcements from the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. The partnership with Kyodo will also ensure expanded coverage of the Japanese prime minister’s office and key ministries.
“We are going through dramatic change in financial markets,” said Mark Smith, Thomson Reuters’ markets senior company officer in Japan. ”Our customers require now more than ever trusted, relevant and timely news and analysis of domestic and international events. We see a tremendous opportunity to meet this increasing demand.”
Reuters opened its first office in Japan in 1872. Reuters Japanese News was launched in 1985 as ReuterScoop, one of a number of local language news services.
● SOURCE Media Newsline
Industrial action ballot over nine-day fortnight
Friday 13 March 2009
Journalists at Thomson Reuters are balloting on industrial action to protect the right of former Thomson Financial News staff to a nine-day fortnight.
The National Union of Journalists is holding a ballot after rejecting the company's offer of £1,000 in compensation for the loss of the nine-day fortnight as "risible" and "totally inadequate". The union says former TFN staff have vowed to continue working their current hours, despite threats of disciplinary action.
The dispute over working hours is part of a wider argument over pay that has been brewing for months, The Guardian reported. The company's latest offer is a 1.25% rise in annual pay across the board, which the union has criticised as below inflation.
Barry Fitzpatrick, the NUJ's head of publishing, said TFN members regarded the nine-day fortnight as an essential benefit given the low pay rise and the fact that their colleagues from the Reuters side of the business were better paid.
"Many former TFN staff are paid significantly less than Reuters' colleagues for doing the same work, and in a lot of cases paid not much more than a Reuters trainee's starting salary," Fitzpatrick said.
"If the company is serious about harmonisation, it should properly consider its journalists' claim for compensation, which, given the company's massive profits, is more than affordable even in these difficult times."
A Thomson Reuters spokeswoman said: "We regret that the NUJ has decided to take this course of action, particularly in light of the concerted and prolonged efforts made by the company to resolve matters amicably. We delayed implementation of the changes to work, employed favourable enhancements to terms and conditions and proposed a financial offer, which has been flatly rejected by the NUJ."
● SOURCE The Guardian
The National Union of Journalists is holding a ballot after rejecting the company's offer of £1,000 in compensation for the loss of the nine-day fortnight as "risible" and "totally inadequate". The union says former TFN staff have vowed to continue working their current hours, despite threats of disciplinary action.
The dispute over working hours is part of a wider argument over pay that has been brewing for months, The Guardian reported. The company's latest offer is a 1.25% rise in annual pay across the board, which the union has criticised as below inflation.
Barry Fitzpatrick, the NUJ's head of publishing, said TFN members regarded the nine-day fortnight as an essential benefit given the low pay rise and the fact that their colleagues from the Reuters side of the business were better paid.
"Many former TFN staff are paid significantly less than Reuters' colleagues for doing the same work, and in a lot of cases paid not much more than a Reuters trainee's starting salary," Fitzpatrick said.
"If the company is serious about harmonisation, it should properly consider its journalists' claim for compensation, which, given the company's massive profits, is more than affordable even in these difficult times."
A Thomson Reuters spokeswoman said: "We regret that the NUJ has decided to take this course of action, particularly in light of the concerted and prolonged efforts made by the company to resolve matters amicably. We delayed implementation of the changes to work, employed favourable enhancements to terms and conditions and proposed a financial offer, which has been flatly rejected by the NUJ."
● SOURCE The Guardian
Reuters revamps websites to improve global crisis cover
Tuesday 10 March 2009
Reuters is changing its websites to improve coverage of the global economic crisis.
Editor-in-chief David Schlesinger, in a blog posting aimed at visitors to the sites, says the crisis is the biggest story in modern times “and a record audience is turning to Reuters for information you can trust”.
“I share with you some changes we’ve brought to Reuters.com and Reuters.co.uk to help you understand the financial turmoil and benefit from the expertise of our 2,550 journalists around the globe,” Schlesinger says.
“You’ll notice more headlines from our financial correspondents and more video interviews with business newsmakers. We’ve added a new Economy section, increased our coverage of regulation and will soon relaunch our small business and environment pages.
“Our Great Debate section has added more financial commentary from our growing team of Reuters columnists, with technology expert Eric Auchard among the writers joining James Saft, John Kemp and Bernd Debusmann. We also offer more graphics for better insight into the financial markets. And we continue to add specialist blogs, with Hedge Hub providing a place for readers to discuss the hedge fund industry with journalists such as Laurence Fletcher.
“Of course, we know you rely on us for news of the political and cultural trends that influence our personal and professional worlds. You’ll find full coverage of the new U.S. administration on our Barack Obama: First 100 Days page, while pages ranging from Afghanistan to Wine can be found in our Topics section. Our India edition has a page dedicated to the national elections there. Bureaus in China, Japan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories have blogs to share their insights and we offer more video from our entertainment reporters. China and Japan have added native language blogs on their local editions.”
Schlesinger promises many more changes throughout 2009 that will help visitors to navigate “the unrivaled breadth and depth of Thomson Reuters news and data”.
● SOURCE Reuters
Editor-in-chief David Schlesinger, in a blog posting aimed at visitors to the sites, says the crisis is the biggest story in modern times “and a record audience is turning to Reuters for information you can trust”.
“I share with you some changes we’ve brought to Reuters.com and Reuters.co.uk to help you understand the financial turmoil and benefit from the expertise of our 2,550 journalists around the globe,” Schlesinger says.
“You’ll notice more headlines from our financial correspondents and more video interviews with business newsmakers. We’ve added a new Economy section, increased our coverage of regulation and will soon relaunch our small business and environment pages.
“Our Great Debate section has added more financial commentary from our growing team of Reuters columnists, with technology expert Eric Auchard among the writers joining James Saft, John Kemp and Bernd Debusmann. We also offer more graphics for better insight into the financial markets. And we continue to add specialist blogs, with Hedge Hub providing a place for readers to discuss the hedge fund industry with journalists such as Laurence Fletcher.
“Of course, we know you rely on us for news of the political and cultural trends that influence our personal and professional worlds. You’ll find full coverage of the new U.S. administration on our Barack Obama: First 100 Days page, while pages ranging from Afghanistan to Wine can be found in our Topics section. Our India edition has a page dedicated to the national elections there. Bureaus in China, Japan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories have blogs to share their insights and we offer more video from our entertainment reporters. China and Japan have added native language blogs on their local editions.”
Schlesinger promises many more changes throughout 2009 that will help visitors to navigate “the unrivaled breadth and depth of Thomson Reuters news and data”.
● SOURCE Reuters
Thomson Reuters restructures multimedia operations
Wednesday 18 February 2009
Thomson Reuters is restructuring its multimedia operations to face a growing challenge from digital and video competitors like Bloomberg and The Associated Press.
Chris Cramer (pictured), former CNN chief, comes out on top. Cramer, named head of multimedia in October, will serve as the unit's global editor. His new responsibilities entail the creation of five editorial groups, including TV, photos, financial video, online and agency. By coordinating them, the company hopes to build on its appeal, even while it strenuously tries to cut costs, the digital media industry website paidContent said.
The five multimedia groups will be led by senior editors. Mike Stepanovich, senior vice-president and global head of business development, adds the role of managing editor of the financial video service. John Clarke and Tom Szlukovenyi will continue in their jobs overseeing TV and photos respectively. The two others – online global editor and agency global editor – are new posts and have not yet been filled.
Cramer was a president and managing director of CNN International before he retired from the Turner network in 2007. David Schlesinger, Reuters' editor-in-chief, brought him into the company last year to handle the financial video service. Before the latest change, only the teams who worked on financial video and online reported to Cramer.
“As competitors like Bloomberg and Associated Press have become more aggressive on the digital and video front, Thomson Reuters is trying to step up by introducing a new management structure for its multimedia offerings,” paidContent said.
● SOURCE Paid Content
Unfair labor practice charges over union t-shirts in newsrooms
Tuesday 03 February 2009
The New York Newspaper Guild has filed two unfair labor practice charges against Thomson Reuters over the wearing of red union t-shirts in newsrooms.
It says the company unfairly barred workers from their long-standing practice of wearing the t-shirts to show solidarity during labor contract negotiations.
The Guild's charges to the National Labor Relations Board said Thomson Reuters violated federal labor law by banning only Guild t-shirts and by implementing a dress code without bargaining with the union as required.
"This is the first time in the union's more than 30 years at Reuters that management has been so rattled as to ban a display of union support," said Guild President Bill O'Meara. "Our members are more than a little riled at management trying to curb their right to show solidarity with their union."
The company ordered newsroom staffers not to wear the t-shirts if they could be captured by television cameras using the newsrooms in New York and Washington as a backdrop to Thomson Reuters’ new web-based video product, Insider.
The union and the company have had three bargaining sessions aimed at agreeing a new contract to replace the one that expires on 28 February.
● SOURCE PR Newswire
It says the company unfairly barred workers from their long-standing practice of wearing the t-shirts to show solidarity during labor contract negotiations.
The Guild's charges to the National Labor Relations Board said Thomson Reuters violated federal labor law by banning only Guild t-shirts and by implementing a dress code without bargaining with the union as required.
"This is the first time in the union's more than 30 years at Reuters that management has been so rattled as to ban a display of union support," said Guild President Bill O'Meara. "Our members are more than a little riled at management trying to curb their right to show solidarity with their union."
The company ordered newsroom staffers not to wear the t-shirts if they could be captured by television cameras using the newsrooms in New York and Washington as a backdrop to Thomson Reuters’ new web-based video product, Insider.
The union and the company have had three bargaining sessions aimed at agreeing a new contract to replace the one that expires on 28 February.
● SOURCE PR Newswire
Discordant notes on the economic crisis
Wednesday 17 December 2008
Reuters has been indulging in navel-gazing over the global economic crisis to try to discover whether the media has been doing its job in reporting the story.
Are journalists keeping things in perspective? Should they even be using words like “crisis” or “meltdown”? Are they being careful not to sow panic and make things even worse?
David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief, doubts whether financial journalists could have done much more to predict the depth of the crisis.
“Journalists do best when reporting what’s happening and giving the news context and analysis,” he said. “We also do well when we look backwards and discuss past events from the perspective of the present. We do least well when we prognosticate. While our reporting and commentary did discuss potential weak points in the economy, we did not – and nor frankly could we – accurately predict the calamitous events of this year.”
Dean Wright (pictured), global editor, ethics, innovation and news standards, says Schlesinger worries, though, that there was a certain inevitability to the crisis and that the media played a role.
“I do worry about the narrative lines of reporting that contributed to the crisis,” he said. “To take just one example, much of the crisis was caused by banks taking on excess risks in the pursuit of higher profits. Yet had a major bank president stepped back from that fray and declined to participate, the ‘grammar’ of our results reporting would surely have compared that bank’s results negatively against expectations and against its peers.
“That brave bank president would surely have lost at least his bonus and probably his job. The very fear of that kind of negative comparison helped spur things on – as Citibank’s ex-CEO Charles Prince said (while still in his job), ‘As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.’
“We in the media help play that music, probably exacerbating the highs on the way up and the lows on the way down.”
So, did the media help change the tune that was being played, Wright asks in a recent Reuters Editors blog. Did it raise questions about the factors that contributed to the crisis, including complex financial instruments, subprime mortgage lending and excessive risk?
Questioning notes were sounded, he writes. As early as 18 August, 2003, a Reuters story quoted a Federal Reserve governor citing the dangers of “predatory lending” in extending subprime credit. By 2006, the pace had accelerated. A Factiva search found 128 Reuters stories that mentioned the phrase “subprime mortgage” that year, including a number in which analysts predicted a deterioration in credit quality. The crescendo came in 2007 when there were more than 10,000 stories that referenced subprime mortgages and when Reuters.com built a special section to house material on the issue.
“Still, the overall ‘music’ was loud and infectious and it’s easy to understand why so many couldn’t stay off the dance floor, says Wright.
He adds: “As Schlesinger says, ‘We have a responsibility to be careful, and most of our reporting has been very careful. But we too have played some discordant notes and we need to learn from that.’
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters to include news by US ‘upstart’
Monday 15 December 2008
Reuters is to incorporate US government and political news from an “upstart news source” into its newswire in a revenue-sharing deal to offer combined coverage to American newspapers and broadcasters.
The deal will bring together about 120 journalists in Washington, DC covering politics and business. The combined coverage will be offered to 60 newspapers and 40 broadcasters who are currently part of an advertising network run by Politico, an online service whose “informed political coverage, sometimes spiced with attitude” was launched less than two years ago. In exchange, they would allow Politico to sell online advertising on their websites.
The New York Times described Politico as “the upstart news source from Washington” and Reuters as “the venerable wire service”. It said the venture was the latest step in the rising competition among electronic news media to fill the void left by the shrinking print business.
The new service would be free for six months, and the partners could charge for the Reuters content after that, it said.
But until then, Politico would offer Reuters a foot in the door at a large number of US news operations, said Christoph Pleitgen, Thomson Reuters’ global head of news agency.
“He said his service had just 15 newspaper clients in this country, compared with more than 1,400 for The Associated Press,” The New York Times said.
“If we can, through this, engage with potential clients we don’t have a relationship with, that’s fantastic,” Pleitgen said. “There absolutely is an untapped market.”
The New York Times added: “Politico’s informed political coverage, sometimes spiced with attitude from its writers, complements Reuters’ sober style and Washington coverage that often reads as if written for an overseas audience.”
● SOURCE Reuters | The New York Times | Politico
The deal will bring together about 120 journalists in Washington, DC covering politics and business. The combined coverage will be offered to 60 newspapers and 40 broadcasters who are currently part of an advertising network run by Politico, an online service whose “informed political coverage, sometimes spiced with attitude” was launched less than two years ago. In exchange, they would allow Politico to sell online advertising on their websites.
The New York Times described Politico as “the upstart news source from Washington” and Reuters as “the venerable wire service”. It said the venture was the latest step in the rising competition among electronic news media to fill the void left by the shrinking print business.
The new service would be free for six months, and the partners could charge for the Reuters content after that, it said.
But until then, Politico would offer Reuters a foot in the door at a large number of US news operations, said Christoph Pleitgen, Thomson Reuters’ global head of news agency.
“He said his service had just 15 newspaper clients in this country, compared with more than 1,400 for The Associated Press,” The New York Times said.
“If we can, through this, engage with potential clients we don’t have a relationship with, that’s fantastic,” Pleitgen said. “There absolutely is an untapped market.”
The New York Times added: “Politico’s informed political coverage, sometimes spiced with attitude from its writers, complements Reuters’ sober style and Washington coverage that often reads as if written for an overseas audience.”
● SOURCE Reuters | The New York Times | Politico
UK editorial staff meet over pay offer
Wednesday 03 December 2008
Editorial staff at Thomson Reuters in London will hold a union meeting on Wednesday over management’s annual pay offer ahead of a year-end deadline for talks.
The Guardian reported that despite beating forecasts in its latest results – Q3 revenues were eight per cent higher – the company initially threatened to freeze the basic salaries of its 5,000 UK staff next year because of the economic downturn.
Staff would be eligible for a 2.5 per cent increase based on performance.
“However, yesterday management was understood to have offered an improved deal of an across the board pay of 1%, with staff eligible for a further 1.5% in performance-related pay,” the newspaper said.
The National Union of Journalists is holding out for a better offer.
● SOURCE The Guardian
The Guardian reported that despite beating forecasts in its latest results – Q3 revenues were eight per cent higher – the company initially threatened to freeze the basic salaries of its 5,000 UK staff next year because of the economic downturn.
Staff would be eligible for a 2.5 per cent increase based on performance.
“However, yesterday management was understood to have offered an improved deal of an across the board pay of 1%, with staff eligible for a further 1.5% in performance-related pay,” the newspaper said.
The National Union of Journalists is holding out for a better offer.
● SOURCE The Guardian
NUJ members call for strike ballot
Wednesday 03 December 2008
National Union of Journalists members at Thomson Reuters in London rejected a pay offer on Wednesday and instructed officials to hold a strike ballot.
The company says the UK pay budget can rise only 2.5 per cent in 2009 because of the tough economic climate. The latest offer is for a one per cent increase across the board with a further 1.5 per cent based on performance.
The offer was rejected unanimously at the NUJ meeting. A further motion to hold a ballot for industrial action was passed by an overwhelming majority.
A strike over job cuts following the April merger of Thomson and Reuters was averted when management promised there would be no compulsory redundancies in the UK editorial operation.
A company spokeswoman told The Guardian that talks over a pay deal were continuing.
● SOURCE The Guardian
The company says the UK pay budget can rise only 2.5 per cent in 2009 because of the tough economic climate. The latest offer is for a one per cent increase across the board with a further 1.5 per cent based on performance.
The offer was rejected unanimously at the NUJ meeting. A further motion to hold a ballot for industrial action was passed by an overwhelming majority.
A strike over job cuts following the April merger of Thomson and Reuters was averted when management promised there would be no compulsory redundancies in the UK editorial operation.
A company spokeswoman told The Guardian that talks over a pay deal were continuing.
● SOURCE The Guardian
Police evacuate New York newsroom
Monday 27 October 2008
Reuters’ New York newsroom was evacuated on Monday after an envelope with a "puff of powder" in it was received.
Police told staff to evacuate the 19th floor newsroom after Brian Rhoads, managing editor for the Americas, opened an envelope and a "puff of powder" came out of it, Reuters spokeswoman Jolie Hunt said.
Police isolated the envelope, and Rhoads, and then told the 140 members of staff to leave as a precautionary measure while they investigated. News was filed from other offices.
Nearly three hours later the authorities said the powder was harmless and staff returned to their desks, Hunt said.
Threatening letters, many containing a suspicious white powder, have been sent this month to Chase bank offices in several US states and the headquarters of The New York Times. The letters said “it’s payback time”, according to a text released by the FBI.
US authorities have been on alert for such letters since 2001 when envelopes laced with anthrax were sent to media outlets and lawmakers, killing five people.
● SOURCE Reuters
Police told staff to evacuate the 19th floor newsroom after Brian Rhoads, managing editor for the Americas, opened an envelope and a "puff of powder" came out of it, Reuters spokeswoman Jolie Hunt said.
Police isolated the envelope, and Rhoads, and then told the 140 members of staff to leave as a precautionary measure while they investigated. News was filed from other offices.
Nearly three hours later the authorities said the powder was harmless and staff returned to their desks, Hunt said.
Threatening letters, many containing a suspicious white powder, have been sent this month to Chase bank offices in several US states and the headquarters of The New York Times. The letters said “it’s payback time”, according to a text released by the FBI.
US authorities have been on alert for such letters since 2001 when envelopes laced with anthrax were sent to media outlets and lawmakers, killing five people.
● SOURCE Reuters
Former CNN chief to head multimedia
Monday 15 September 2008
Reuters appointed former CNN International president Chris Cramer to the newly created role of global editor for multimedia.
He will oversee multimedia projects including the reuters.com website and act as the main liaison between the news organisation and media business.
He will be based in New York and report to editor-in-chief David Schlesinger, who said: "Cramer's distinguished track record of driving innovations in news gathering will be key to building on our recognised multimedia ventures and century and a half of journalist excellence."
Cramer spent 20 years at the BBC prior to joining CNN.
● SOURCE Reuters
He will oversee multimedia projects including the reuters.com website and act as the main liaison between the news organisation and media business.
He will be based in New York and report to editor-in-chief David Schlesinger, who said: "Cramer's distinguished track record of driving innovations in news gathering will be key to building on our recognised multimedia ventures and century and a half of journalist excellence."
Cramer spent 20 years at the BBC prior to joining CNN.
● SOURCE Reuters
Reuters Olympics team is 200 strong
Monday 04 August 2008
Reuters is fielding a team of 200 for the Beijing Olympics with 100 text reporters, 80 photographers and TV crews, technicians, logistics and other supporting teams.
Reuters has 24 correspondents stationed in China with a much larger local support team working on the ground.
“It’s definitely one of the biggest foreign media presences in China,” editor-in-chief David Schlesinger said on the eve of his departure for Beijing.
For Reuters, “the biggest problem and challenge is to find reporters who understand both the language, culture and Chinese society,” he told China’s Xinhua News Agency.
Schlesinger, formerly a correspondent in Beijing, was speaking in a telephone interview with Xinhua on the eve of his departure for a 15-day stay. He will be the guest of Li Congjun, president of Xinhua, at Friday’s opening ceremony.
“I’ll meet Xinhua’s new president during my stay in Beijing for constructive dialogue, in addition to meeting officials from the Information Office of the State Council as well as other friends,” Xinhua quoted him as saying.
Schlesinger said Reuters would offer “fair, unbiased, responsible coverage” of the Games, Xinhua said. Besides covering sports it would also report on the political, social and economic scene in China.
“We are interested in how China prepares for the Games, the facilities, how the city works during the Games, traffic and pollution, whether the stadiums are full, how athletes are made to feel welcome, media and visa regulations in the run-up to the Games, etc,” Schlesinger said.
● SOURCE Xinhua
Reuters has 24 correspondents stationed in China with a much larger local support team working on the ground.
“It’s definitely one of the biggest foreign media presences in China,” editor-in-chief David Schlesinger said on the eve of his departure for Beijing.
For Reuters, “the biggest problem and challenge is to find reporters who understand both the language, culture and Chinese society,” he told China’s Xinhua News Agency.
Schlesinger, formerly a correspondent in Beijing, was speaking in a telephone interview with Xinhua on the eve of his departure for a 15-day stay. He will be the guest of Li Congjun, president of Xinhua, at Friday’s opening ceremony.
“I’ll meet Xinhua’s new president during my stay in Beijing for constructive dialogue, in addition to meeting officials from the Information Office of the State Council as well as other friends,” Xinhua quoted him as saying.
Schlesinger said Reuters would offer “fair, unbiased, responsible coverage” of the Games, Xinhua said. Besides covering sports it would also report on the political, social and economic scene in China.
“We are interested in how China prepares for the Games, the facilities, how the city works during the Games, traffic and pollution, whether the stadiums are full, how athletes are made to feel welcome, media and visa regulations in the run-up to the Games, etc,” Schlesinger said.
● SOURCE Xinhua
Editorial automation set to advance
Tuesday 22 July 2008
Automatically-generated financial news and data is set to increase, freeing up journalists to develop exclusives or write analyses.
A Thomson Reuters survey has found that financial firms using advanced algorithmic trading techniques expect IT-driven news analysis tools to substantially shorten the time it takes them to act on new information.
Ventanta Research spoke to 113 specialist financial professionals and found that two-thirds expect increased automation in the analysis of news.
Prior to the April take-over, both Thomson and Reuters were working on products which deliver data and other news to financial services customers in a format that can be read and acted on automatically by computers. Much of that content is also created automatically.
“It’s still the same news – we’re not really providing a different piece of news, we’re just providing it in a different format,” said James Chenery, Thomson Reuters’ business development manager for quantitative and event-driven trading products.
“We’re providing particular pieces of data, which used to be very much textual in their delivery, in a much more structured message whether it’s XML or Reuters’ real time for the market feed.”
“Earnings releases are primarily numerical in nature, but when they are covered by text – a sentence – then it becomes more difficult for a machine to understand and comprehend that information,” Chenery said.
Reuters has begun adding machine-interpretable semantic data to otherwise conventional, human-readable news stories.
Thomson Reuters expects machine-readable news to become an increasingly important part of the company’s business and has said that the automated extraction and delivery of data used by these tools will free journalists to do other, less mechanic work.
“By providing that kind of automation and technology, it allows the journalists to spend more time developing exclusives or writing up more information,” Chenery said.
“We don’t want a relatively highly paid journalist putting a textual number into some sort of system to send it out when we can do that automatically and probably faster and would rather have that journalist writing an analysis piece or something like that.”
● SOURCE Press Gazette
A Thomson Reuters survey has found that financial firms using advanced algorithmic trading techniques expect IT-driven news analysis tools to substantially shorten the time it takes them to act on new information.
Ventanta Research spoke to 113 specialist financial professionals and found that two-thirds expect increased automation in the analysis of news.
Prior to the April take-over, both Thomson and Reuters were working on products which deliver data and other news to financial services customers in a format that can be read and acted on automatically by computers. Much of that content is also created automatically.
“It’s still the same news – we’re not really providing a different piece of news, we’re just providing it in a different format,” said James Chenery, Thomson Reuters’ business development manager for quantitative and event-driven trading products.
“We’re providing particular pieces of data, which used to be very much textual in their delivery, in a much more structured message whether it’s XML or Reuters’ real time for the market feed.”
“Earnings releases are primarily numerical in nature, but when they are covered by text – a sentence – then it becomes more difficult for a machine to understand and comprehend that information,” Chenery said.
Reuters has begun adding machine-interpretable semantic data to otherwise conventional, human-readable news stories.
Thomson Reuters expects machine-readable news to become an increasingly important part of the company’s business and has said that the automated extraction and delivery of data used by these tools will free journalists to do other, less mechanic work.
“By providing that kind of automation and technology, it allows the journalists to spend more time developing exclusives or writing up more information,” Chenery said.
“We don’t want a relatively highly paid journalist putting a textual number into some sort of system to send it out when we can do that automatically and probably faster and would rather have that journalist writing an analysis piece or something like that.”
● SOURCE Press Gazette
New Americas managing editor named
Tuesday 15 July 2008
Brian Rhoads has been named managing editor for the Americas following Betty Wong’s promotion as global managing editor.
He will take up the new role in New York on 29 September after overseeing Reuters’ coverage of next month’s Beijing Olympics.
Rhoads, 42, a Beijing-based Mandarin speaker, has been North Asia Editor responsible for China, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong since 2007. He joined Reuters in 1996 and served as China bureau chief, Shanghai bureau chief and a senior editor on news production desks in Hong Kong and Singapore.
His new role involves leading an editorial team of 650 journalists across text, video and pictures.
“Brian’s deep knowledge of China and the region will be an asset in the Americas for our journalists as well as our customers,” Wong, 44, said.
“I look forward to his joining the managing editors group which also includes Europe, Middle East and Africa managing editor Mark Thompson based in London and Asia managing editor Adrian Dickson based in Hong Kong.”
● SOURCE The Guardian
He will take up the new role in New York on 29 September after overseeing Reuters’ coverage of next month’s Beijing Olympics.
Rhoads, 42, a Beijing-based Mandarin speaker, has been North Asia Editor responsible for China, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong since 2007. He joined Reuters in 1996 and served as China bureau chief, Shanghai bureau chief and a senior editor on news production desks in Hong Kong and Singapore.
His new role involves leading an editorial team of 650 journalists across text, video and pictures.
“Brian’s deep knowledge of China and the region will be an asset in the Americas for our journalists as well as our customers,” Wong, 44, said.
“I look forward to his joining the managing editors group which also includes Europe, Middle East and Africa managing editor Mark Thompson based in London and Asia managing editor Adrian Dickson based in Hong Kong.”
● SOURCE The Guardian
MP meets management over job cuts
Monday 16 June 2008
British MP Austin Mitchell is to meet Thomson Reuters management in an attempt to help resolve a union wrangle over possible compulsory redundancies, Press Gazette reported.
Mitchell, a Labour politician, is chairman of the National Union of Journalists Parliamentary Group.
NUJ official Barry Fitzpatrick said Mitchell would be discussing options for the company. Some 70 UK editorial positions are under threat, the weekly magazine said. Worldwide, the number of journalists’ jobs to be axed is 140. The losses are part of the shake-out from Thomson’s takeover of Reuters in April.
The NUJ was meeting the company today and Fitzpatrick said it has formally initiated a disputes procedure which gives a deadline of 15 July to resolve differences.
● SOURCE Press Gazette
Mitchell, a Labour politician, is chairman of the National Union of Journalists Parliamentary Group.
NUJ official Barry Fitzpatrick said Mitchell would be discussing options for the company. Some 70 UK editorial positions are under threat, the weekly magazine said. Worldwide, the number of journalists’ jobs to be axed is 140. The losses are part of the shake-out from Thomson’s takeover of Reuters in April.
The NUJ was meeting the company today and Fitzpatrick said it has formally initiated a disputes procedure which gives a deadline of 15 July to resolve differences.
● SOURCE Press Gazette
UK editorial staff call for strike ballot
Tuesday 10 June 2008
London newsroom staff are to hold a ballot over possible industrial action, The Guardian reported. It said the decision follows the refusal of management to delay planned redundancies and rejection of an offer from National Union of Journalists’ officials to bring in the UK Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service.
NUJ officials met Thomson Reuters management on Monday but staff concerns about the technicalities of the redundancy process were not met, the newspaper said.
“As a result, the Thomson and Reuters NUJ chapels have now moved to hold strike ballots,” it said.
Thomson Reuters wants to cut 70 journalists from the London newsroom as part of job reductions following the recent merger.
“The NUJ said it had made several requests for management to explain the reasons for the cuts but has not received a satisfactory answer,” The Guardian said.
“Union officials also asked for ACAS to be invited to help resolve the dispute but the conciliation service cannot get involved until after the 90-day consultation period, by which time the job cuts will have taken place.”
The Guardian quoted editor-in-chief David Schlesinger as saying management has “maintained a transparent and cooperative dialogue with staff and relevant global unions” during the merger.
“We are trying the minimise the uncertainty for our UK journalists and we are continuing our ongoing consultation with the NUJ.”
● SOURCE The Guardian
NUJ officials met Thomson Reuters management on Monday but staff concerns about the technicalities of the redundancy process were not met, the newspaper said.
“As a result, the Thomson and Reuters NUJ chapels have now moved to hold strike ballots,” it said.
Thomson Reuters wants to cut 70 journalists from the London newsroom as part of job reductions following the recent merger.
“The NUJ said it had made several requests for management to explain the reasons for the cuts but has not received a satisfactory answer,” The Guardian said.
“Union officials also asked for ACAS to be invited to help resolve the dispute but the conciliation service cannot get involved until after the 90-day consultation period, by which time the job cuts will have taken place.”
The Guardian quoted editor-in-chief David Schlesinger as saying management has “maintained a transparent and cooperative dialogue with staff and relevant global unions” during the merger.
“We are trying the minimise the uncertainty for our UK journalists and we are continuing our ongoing consultation with the NUJ.”
● SOURCE The Guardian
Journalists in UK edge towards strike
Friday 06 June 2008
Journalists at Thomson Reuters in London moved closer to strike action over planned job cuts and attacked management over plans to reshape the company, The Guardian reported.
“At a well-attended union meeting today, journalists from both Thomson and Reuters passed a resolution that could set the wheels in motion as soon as next week for industrial action,” it said.
Reporters are angry about plans to cut jobs in the UK, 73 of them journalist posts, The Guardian said. National Union of Journalists officials argue that management have shortened the window for voluntary redundancies and have not ruled out compulsory job cuts.
“At today’s meeting, staff passed a resolution that will be put to management on Monday: ‘This chapel is prepared to take industrial action in the event the company tries to impose compulsory redundancies and instructs its officers to move ahead with a strike ballot if the company imposes timelines for redundancies without consultation.’”
The Guardian said Thomson Reuters has told staff that the group will ultimately be expanding with new ventures such as web TV and more comment writing.
“However, employees say they are angry at the job cuts, which many believe show reporters are paying for an unjustified expansion into areas not traditionally associated with Reuters or Thomson.
“They argue more comment and new TV ventures will come at the expense of the core coverage of basic financial, general and sports news.”
In two other resolutions, union members said they had no confidence in editorial strategy as explained by management and they believed it will lead to a deterioration in the quality of the service, The Guardian said.
● SOURCE The Guardian
“At a well-attended union meeting today, journalists from both Thomson and Reuters passed a resolution that could set the wheels in motion as soon as next week for industrial action,” it said.
Reporters are angry about plans to cut jobs in the UK, 73 of them journalist posts, The Guardian said. National Union of Journalists officials argue that management have shortened the window for voluntary redundancies and have not ruled out compulsory job cuts.
“At today’s meeting, staff passed a resolution that will be put to management on Monday: ‘This chapel is prepared to take industrial action in the event the company tries to impose compulsory redundancies and instructs its officers to move ahead with a strike ballot if the company imposes timelines for redundancies without consultation.’”
The Guardian said Thomson Reuters has told staff that the group will ultimately be expanding with new ventures such as web TV and more comment writing.
“However, employees say they are angry at the job cuts, which many believe show reporters are paying for an unjustified expansion into areas not traditionally associated with Reuters or Thomson.
“They argue more comment and new TV ventures will come at the expense of the core coverage of basic financial, general and sports news.”
In two other resolutions, union members said they had no confidence in editorial strategy as explained by management and they believed it will lead to a deterioration in the quality of the service, The Guardian said.
● SOURCE The Guardian
140 editorial jobs go by end 2008
Monday 19 May 2008
Some 140 editorial jobs will be cut by the end of this year as Reuters News absorbs Thomson Financial News, editor-in-chief David Schlesinger told staff.
More than half the cuts will be in Europe while the rest will be scattered, he said.
At the same time Reuters will add about 50 new jobs in growth areas making for 2,500 editorial employees by year’s end.
“When two similar and once competing organisations come together, there is natural overlap and duplication in coverage,” Schlesinger told staff in a memo.
“Wherever possible, we have worked to minimize job losses and to avoid redundancy by moving people into new roles and cancelling open posts that don’t fit within the new organisation,” he added.
The National Union of Journalists said it had not ruled out a strike but would negotiate with the company first.
“The NUJ has been pressing hard to have any job cuts carried out through voluntary redundancies and will continue to do so,” said Myra MacDonald, Mother of the NUJ Chapel in London.
A BBC report said Thomson Reuters could lose about 1,500 jobs from its 50,000-strong payroll in total. The company is cutting as many as 650 jobs in its content, technology and operations division.
● SOURCE Reuters
More than half the cuts will be in Europe while the rest will be scattered, he said.
At the same time Reuters will add about 50 new jobs in growth areas making for 2,500 editorial employees by year’s end.
“When two similar and once competing organisations come together, there is natural overlap and duplication in coverage,” Schlesinger told staff in a memo.
“Wherever possible, we have worked to minimize job losses and to avoid redundancy by moving people into new roles and cancelling open posts that don’t fit within the new organisation,” he added.
The National Union of Journalists said it had not ruled out a strike but would negotiate with the company first.
“The NUJ has been pressing hard to have any job cuts carried out through voluntary redundancies and will continue to do so,” said Myra MacDonald, Mother of the NUJ Chapel in London.
A BBC report said Thomson Reuters could lose about 1,500 jobs from its 50,000-strong payroll in total. The company is cutting as many as 650 jobs in its content, technology and operations division.
● SOURCE Reuters
Journalists said to consider strike
Monday 12 May 2008
Thomson Reuters journalists, bracing for job cuts this week, are contemplating strike action over the way managers are slashing costs, The Guardian reported.
Staff expect CEO Tom Glocer to make an internal announcement on how many jobs will be axed before, or most likely on, 19 May, it said.
“Reports from the newsrooms of both (Thomson and Reuters) news wires tell of an increasingly anxious atmosphere as journalists fear they will be forced out of their jobs because management is expected to opt for compulsory rather than voluntary redundancies to cut out overlap,” The Guardian said.
National Union of Journalists officials say managers have so far refused to commit to using voluntary redundancies, it said. “As a result, staff at Thomson have already voted unanimously to hold a strike ballot.
“Last month a separate proposed ballot for industrial action among Reuters staff was suspended by the NUJ pending further negotiations with the management.
“Once they get details on job cuts from Glocer, union members at Reuters and Thomson say they will meet to discuss possible industrial action,” The Guardian said.
It said management will be under pressure to cut as many costs as possible given rising concerns over the outlook for financial markets.
● SOURCE The Guardian
Staff expect CEO Tom Glocer to make an internal announcement on how many jobs will be axed before, or most likely on, 19 May, it said.
“Reports from the newsrooms of both (Thomson and Reuters) news wires tell of an increasingly anxious atmosphere as journalists fear they will be forced out of their jobs because management is expected to opt for compulsory rather than voluntary redundancies to cut out overlap,” The Guardian said.
National Union of Journalists officials say managers have so far refused to commit to using voluntary redundancies, it said. “As a result, staff at Thomson have already voted unanimously to hold a strike ballot.
“Last month a separate proposed ballot for industrial action among Reuters staff was suspended by the NUJ pending further negotiations with the management.
“Once they get details on job cuts from Glocer, union members at Reuters and Thomson say they will meet to discuss possible industrial action,” The Guardian said.
It said management will be under pressure to cut as many costs as possible given rising concerns over the outlook for financial markets.
● SOURCE The Guardian
