Reuters editorial desk shake-up in drive for quality

There will be a single unified desk in each of the organisation’s three regions – Asia; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Americas – handling copy filed to two baskets divided by subject area: companies, commodities and energy stories in one and political and general, economics and markets stories in the other.

Overnight desk staffing in Europe and the Americas will cease.

“It’s the end of the World Desk as we know it,” one editorial insider commented.

“The reorganisation is not about saving money or cutting staff,” said a joint internal announcement by Ciro Scotti, deputy editor, Americas; Matthew Tostevin, desk editor in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Jean Yoon, Asia desk editor. “It’s about quality.”

The goals are:

• Further improve the quality of editing
• Reinforce standards to build a better capability for publishing and packaging our stories
• Preserve the specialist knowledge essential to writing for specific audiences
• Overhaul our ability to carefully edit and improve long-form stories.

“By unifying our regional desks, we will reinforce their importance to the heart of the news file and offer greater opportunities for talented journalists to make a career of desking or to use their experience as a springboard to advance within Reuters. We will improve consistency globally and be able to manage deskers and story flow more efficiently. One of the early goals will be to improve our international media monitoring so that we can end overnight desk staffing in Europe and the Americas.”

“Deskers will work ever more closely with news editors and bureaus to improve copy as needed through high-quality editing and rewriting. There will be tighter coordination between the Desk, Top News, and Enterprise teams.”

The new regional desks will be up and running by the end of February.

“These global improvements are vital for taking our news and insight to an even higher level. We look forward to everybody’s help in making sure they deliver the benefits they must.” ■