Post-Refinitiv dawn

The new dawn promised by the Blackstone deal didn’t last long. First we watched as our former colleagues (now Refinitiv) were fired, then we stood idle as newsrooms around the world were next for the chop. Some bureaus have been devastated. Award-winning journalists and photographers have been edged out, by one means or another. The lack of dissenting voices is curious.

Why is management not giving more details on what the endgame is here? Where are the town hall meetings? A lot of people are confused and morale is low. It just seems like more of the Thomson cuts and hiring freezes we’ve seen since they bought Reuters in 2008.

Is there a strategy here, aside from cutting journalist numbers and getting call centre-style bureaus to pick up the slack? Is this how you compete with Bloomberg? Cuts and more cuts? Or is this how you prepare for another sale? ■