Where have all the reporters gone?

Reuters’ “Newsroom of the Future” sounds Orwellian. Barry Moody, who has seen more of the Reuters news operation than most of us, bemoans “the latest in a wave of deep cuts to frontline staff who generate news, while creating a bewildering proliferation of expensive senior editors and bureaucracy.”

Would it be far-fetched to think that one day frontline reporting would be outsourced to AP and Bloomberg? Reuters would do the editing, curation and publishing. I hope that day never comes but there is a precedent albeit on a smaller scale.

For many years Reuters depended on AP for US news while Reuters provided AP with British news from the Press Association. When interest in British news waned AP demanded a large additional payment. Reuters refused and in the mid-1960s, under the leadership of Gerald Long, set up its own US news-gathering operation. ■