Reuters strengths

Reuters has had a huge problem managing big IT infrastructure projects [Reuters cancels web project, to develop Reuters.com]. News-to-Web is infamous within editorial but there were plenty more failed projects of a similarly disastrous scale in the rest of the business, culminating in the failure of the first introduction of Eikon. That was unforgivable and heads did roll as a result. The fact is there are a lot of developers within Reuters ever-ready to build more useless products from scratch to keep themselves employed. I’m sorry to say I have seen this with my own eyes.

So I agree with Nelson Graves that Andrew Rashbass’s decision to draw a line under this may be a smart recognition of reality. Personally I think it’s not so much about the sites as the workflows within editorial itself. Where are those 21st century multimedia editing desks in editorial? It never happened. What’s there now is like your Grandad’s version of multimedia. So good for Rashbass. Keep it simple - but get it right. He may be on to something! ■