Change for the better

I have not followed the Reuters file as closely as Paul Holmes has done, and I fully share his criticisms of the ancien régime [Change for the better at Reuters]. Nor do I deny the merit of some of the new initiative reporting. But as a daily if somewhat more casual reader, I’m wondering whether the targets that he mentions the ancien régime setting for interviews and other subjects has not been replaced by a whole new set of targets, so frequently do the labels Exclusive, Insight and Analysis now appear. Without casting doubt on the contents of some of these, I have come across Exclusives whose content seems too insignificant to deserve the accolade, Insights that are blind, and Analyses that add no more substance or context to the story than was or should have been there in the first place. This is a general impression based on months of reading, during which I did not note down the particular stories.

I have also been amazed at the length of some of these pieces, sometimes 40 paragraphs or even more, and the unnecessarily slow denouement. Is Reuters trying to be a magazine here, out New-Yorkering The New Yorker - albeit without The New Yorker’s substance?

Paul is right that there are cock-ups in any undertaking and this should in no way tar Stephen Adler’s efforts to achieve scoops and exclusives. The Soros debacle is a case in point of a cock-up just as the Chesapeake Energy Corp or Libor stories are examples of the opposite. By the way, I note that Mark Egan, whose byline appeared on the Soros story, was let go when his position as New York bureau chief was eliminated. But did anything happen to the editorial gatekeepers who not only let that fine gelding out of the gate but sent it off at a gallop despite other editorial misgivings?

I’ve also noted stories that some see as self-serving and involving a possible conflict of interest. I don’t remember these under the ancien régime, though they were probably well capable of it. I’m thinking of Paul Ingrassia’s book Engines of Change. I was amazed to see an intro blurb and question and answer with Ingrassia on his book in the Reuters file of 26 April. To me this seemed to cross the line of self-promotion, given Ingrassia’s present title of deputy editor in chief of Reuters and his book’s stemming from his previous role as Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps Adler will manage to ride the tiger of keeping Reuters relevant to its base subscribers with bread and butter political, breaking and financial news, and also win the Pulitzers that David Thomson so craves. But I fear that Reuters may lose out on both scores and Thomson might move on to some new goal, jettisoning the agency to the back burner - or worse. ■