Calling former staffers with a tale or two to tell…

“We’re launching an Oral History Project to capture the rich tapestry of experiences, insights, and moments that shaped Reuters through the decades,” Archivist Rory Carruthers (photo on right) told the latest Baron’s Briefing.

“Every memory and insight helps paint a fuller picture of life at Reuters in your time – and if you have a few secrets tucked away, we’d love to hear those too,” he said in the online talk organised by the Reuter Society.

The invitation was part of a fascinating look into the Reuters Archive by Carruthers and his predecessor David Cutler, who regaled the audience with details of Reuters scoops ranging from the Boer War to both the building and demolition of the Berlin Wall.

Carruthers, who took over from Cutler in 2021, said he would welcome hearing from any former staffer, whether they worked in the field, in a newsroom, or behind the scenes in a support role.

“It would be a real privilege to be able to speak to you,” he added.

Anyone interested in taking part should download and complete a Consent Form and email it to rory.carruthers@thomsonreuters.com. Or get in touch with him for more information and details.

A uniquely comprehensive news agency archive

The interviews, which can be in person or via Teams or Zoom, will form part of a vast and unique news library dating back to 1881 and containing millions of items from telegrams, “urgents” and reports to black and white and colour photographs and video.

Cutler, company archivist from 2017 to 2021, told the online talk that among notable historic items are news reports of the Siege of Mafeking (1989-1900) during the Boer war, eye-witness copy from the 1917 Russian Revolution and “urgents” or “snaps” from numerous Reuters world firsts.

“Reuters scooped the world in 1923 with the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, and, during the 1950s, Reuters was first with the publication of Nikita Khrushchev’s “de-Stalinisation” speech denouncing his predecessor Josef Stalin,” Cutler said.

“The world found out from Reuters that the Berlin wall was being erected in 1961,” he added. “The world also found out that it was coming down in 1989 through Reuters.”

The location of the company headquarters in London, away from the ravages of two World Wars, was a major factor in preserving so much of the Archive’s historic content.

“Reuters had been extraordinarily lucky being based in London as much of the material has survived as opposed to its great 19^th century rivals – Havas in France and Wolff in Germany,” Cutler said.

“This has resulted in the archive’s unique status as one of the most comprehensive news agency archives,” he said.

Agence Havas was the world’s first news agency, opening in 1835, with the Wolff Telegraphic Agency following in 1849 and Reuters in 1851.

Cutler said that alongside the news output, the archive also contains biographical data, staff records, tapes, films and books published by and about Reuters, as well as once-secret UK government papers and material describing how Reuters was saved from bankruptcy in 1916.

British government secret funding of Reuters

He described how, in 2017, he was summoned to a branch of the Foreign Office in Milton Keynes, where he was presented with a large number of newly declassified documents from the 1950s to the 1970s concerning a secret operation to channel funds to Reuters, which at the time was expanding its operations in Latin America and the Middle East.

The plan was run by a Foreign Office anti-Soviet propaganda unit known as the Information Research Department, which was linked to British intelligence.

“Apparently money was needed to further expand in the Middle East and South America as Western powers, such as Britain, wanted to bolster their influence against the Soviet Union by expanding news services across the world,” Cutler said, adding that there was no evidence of any change in Reuters editorial policy as a result of the funding.

The documents show that the funding was concealed by using the BBC to make the payments, which amounted to £245,000 a year in the 1960s before dwindling and finally coming to an end in 1972-73.

Click here to read a Reuters report on this story and here for the BBC’s version.

Today’s goals and challenges

For now, Carruthers, and his small team of staff in an enhanced Reuters Archive Unit formed in January 2025, have two main goals: To continue the mammoth task of digitising text, pictures and video content and to continue to maintain and facilitate access to the archive.

“The creation of the new Archive Unit ensures the long-term stability of Reuters’ historic archive by demonstrating its commercial value – for the first time, we can quantify how digitised assets directly contribute to revenue,” he said.

The task is not a small one. Until 2022, the only digital part of the archive was a collection of 100 years of Reuters World, the company’s internal staff magazine, meaning there were literally millions of items still to be scanned and uploaded.

But quick progress is being made.

The archive team, assisted by technology staff, has just finished downloading 2.3 million pages of newswire text from 1,000 microfilm reels dating from 1960 to 1986. And to date, some 42,500 photographic negatives have been transferred to digital format in their original, un-edited form.

The latter are just a small part of a collection of around 350,000 black and white and colour negatives contained in 48 filing cabinets shipped by Thomson Reuters from Eagan, Minnesota, to the archive in London in the spring of 2023.

Waiting in the wings are 1,300 boxes of material, mostly on paper, along with the remaining 300,000 or so picture negatives, which were originally transmitted by the Reuters News Picture Service (now Reuters Pictures) since its inception in 1985 until 2000.

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