Reuters strengths

As mis-fires go, this isn’t all that expensive - even by Reuters standards [Reuters cancels web project, to develop Reuters.com]. N2W cost considerably north of $50 million, and as the designer of an html desktop application that powered reuters.com and our multimedia products I was one of the editorial folks who told the executives behind it that it was architecturally doomed. It would be great if Reuters played to its strengths on the web (Bloomberg does, unapologetically). But as the founding editor of reuters.com I can tell you that the company has always been conflicted about this, at best. Astonishingly the issue of “giving away the store” is still at the center of the conversation two decades on. Simply put: Reuters doesn’t want to seriously compete in the retail space, and never has. It’s time to kill half measures. Go big or go home, Mr Rashbass. ■