Stuart Karle
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
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 changes editorial priorities in quest for Pulitzers
Thursday 23 February 2012
This was the essence of a briefing for European chief correspondents given at a recent meeting in London called by editor-in-chief Stephen Adler, his deputy Paul Ingrassia and Stuart Karle, chief operating officer for Reuters news agency, according to various accounts of the session by people present.
Under the new dispensation correspondents will have to set themselves a minimum target for long-form investigative takeouts and keep to it.
During a recent visit to European bureaux Ingrassia contrasted what he termed “adrenaline journalism” – the traditional wire service story flow – with “aspiration journalism” – the new investigative writing at length that is now being pushed for editorial operations.
Spot news is still wanted but the benchmark should be set higher, chief correspondents were told. It is up to bureau chiefs to decide where that level will be and what stories can be ignored.
Asked about the business case for such a radical switch in journalistic priorities, the editorial chiefs said the chairman and majority owner David Thomson wants Pulitzers, and this is the only way Thomson Reuters can get them. He is a very rich man – the world’s 17th wealthiest billionaire according to the most recent Forbes magazine reckoning – and that is what he wants, chief correspondents were told.
Thomson admired what Sir Harold Evans, appointed Reuters editor-at-large last June, did with The Sunday Times and its Insight team of investigative journalists when he was the British broadsheet’s editor three decades ago. That is what he wants from Thomson Reuters journalists and that is how it has got to be, the new editorial leaders said.
Adler, appointed editor-in-chief a year ago, said Reuters often wins the newsbreaks and follow-up stories in the weeks and even months after an event but it is not very good at keeping after a story over the long term.
Not everyone can be an investigative reporter at the same time. Bureaux will have to cover day-to-day beats when a specialist reporter is busy on his special report.
Adler said the ● reuters.com website – re-designed in December 2009 and again last July to make it more “consumer-facing” – will be thoroughly revamped over coming months. It is intended to make the site a window attracting a much wider audience for the organisation’s paying services, partly with special reports. The aim is to make Thomson Reuters a better Financial Times – a “free newspaper on the site” in the words of one of the executives.
Reuters has been on an editorial hiring spree over the past year, attracting high-profile American editors and writers with a pedigree of Pulitzers and other US journalism prizes in their resumés. But the pace of staff turnover is too slow for new and better people to be brought in quickly enough. “We need to be much more strict on performance,” the chief correspondents were told. The new editorial leadership favours longer postings – five or six years and more – if staffers are performing.
The new leadership wants experts on their beats. Travel and entertainment costs linked to special reporting will not be cut. “Our specialists will need to cultivate their sources.”
International assignment packages, of which there are about 300, will be eliminated.
Reuters aims to become best in the world – Stephen Adler
Friday 16 September 2011
“Indeed, to be fully effective as a global organisation, we have to be as influential and as well known in the US – the world’s largest economy – as we are elsewhere in the world,” editor-in-chief Stephen Adler, pictured, said in an interview published on Friday. “Our mandate at Reuters is to become the best journalism organisation in the world,” he said.
Reuters’ recent hiring spree, including a handful of Pulitzer Prize-winners, has quickly attracted the media world’s attention, the US news website and blog Huffington Post reported. At the same time, it said, Reuters has relaunched its ● website to better showcase its vast reporting in a more consumer-friendly way, stepped up social media efforts and increased analysis, opinion and enterprise reporting.
Reuters is not giving up on breaking financial news that paying subscribers want or reporting international wire stories that cash-strapped newspapers, lacking foreign budgets, increasingly need, The Huffington Post said. However, deputy editor-in-chief Paul Ingrassia says the company wants to go beyond breaking news. “I think what we’re making a bigger effort to do is not only be first with events,” Ingrassia said, “but very quickly and analytically ... report the meaning and impact of those events.”
By giving Adler a mandate to make big moves, Reuters may hope to avoid being lapped by the Bloomberg behemoth, the website said. When asked whether Bloomberg is Reuters’ main competitor, Adler rattled off the many subscription platforms that Reuters offers its users, including traders, investment bankers, lawyers, tax specialists and pharmaceutical researchers. Reuters, he said, also reaches one billion people a day through the agency business used by newspapers, magazines and websites.
“Our audience base is thus quite different from anyone else’s, as is our revenue model,” Adler said. “The better we are, the more our journalism is worth to all of our customers. And we aim to be the best. And, yes, Bloomberg is certainly a leading competitor.”
As part of Reuters’ hiring spree, The Huffington Post noted that last week alone the agency hired former Slate media critic Jack Shafer, Pulitzer-winning Wall Street Journal veteran editor Alix Freedman, and Bay Citizen editor-in-chief and Industry Standard founding editor Jonathan Weber.
The website said that a year ago, media watchers wouldn’t have imagined such a slew of hires coming back-to-back. But Adler – a former deputy managing editor at the Wall Street Journal and Businessweek editor-in-chief just before Bloomberg’s acquisition of the magazine – started making big moves shortly after becoming Reuters editor-in-chief earlier this year.
Adler’s new editorial leadership team was looking like the Wall Street Journal in exile, it said. Ingrassia spent over three decades at the Journal and Dow Jones, where he won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the auto industry and later ran Dow Jones Newswires. Three other former Journal staffers are on board, too: former chief operating officer Stuart Karle, data editor Reginald Chua, and enterprise editor Michael Williams.
“Adler’s leadership team isn’t all Journal ex-pats,” The Huffington Post said. Adler hired Jim Gaines, a former Time Inc. executive most recently at News International’s iPad application The Daily and Harold Evans joined as an editor-at-large. “And some members of the team are old Reuters hands. Chrystia Freeland, who joined Reuters last year, became editor of Thomson Reuters Digital. In May, James Ledbetter moved from ● Reuters.com to become Reuters inaugural op-ed editor…
“When my position was created, there became a much stronger mandate from above to go out and get big names and put the full weight of Reuters behind it,” Ledbetter said. Since he took over, Reuters has hired not only Shafer but two former New York Times reporters with Pulitzers on their resumés: David Rohde and David Cay Johnston. “It’s getting to be quite a stable,” Ledbetter said.
While recent buzz may help raise Reuters’ profile outside, The Huffington Post said there has been some grumbling inside the company. Staffers say there are concerns that too much emphasis is being placed on big-name outside hires at the expense of cultivating talent within. Managers also worry about holding onto their positions in the newsroom amid editorial reshuffling and executives' shifting priorities.”
Staffers say other management changes have gone over well, including an emphasis on getting out of the office more to build deeper source relationships and the dismantling of the long-running beat system that only rewarded stories impacting stock prices. One staffer said it seems clear management wants to build a news organisation that creates a lot more buzz and prestige.
Some staffers believe that management expects to win Pulitzers in the coming years, following Reuters’ greater investment in enterprise and investigative reporting.
Both Adler and Ingrassia, however, balk at any suggestion that there’s a Pulitzer mandate. “Prize-hunting, per se, is not the objective here,” Ingrassia said.
“As I’ve said to the staff, we want to do work that is so memorable and so distinguished that it is recognised by our peers,” Adler said. “Winning awards is one measure of excellence but not an end in itself. We also want people talking about our journalism, sharing it with each other, and using it to make smart decisions and achieve fresh insights.”
● SOURCE The Huffington Post
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
