Reuters changes editorial priorities in quest for Pulitzers

This was the essence of a briefing for European chief correspondents given at a recent meeting in London called by editor-in-chief Stephen Adler, his deputy Paul Ingrassia and Stuart Karle, chief operating officer for Reuters news agency, according to various accounts of the session by people present.

Under the new dispensation correspondents will have to set themselves a minimum target for long-form investigative takeouts and keep to it.

During a recent visit to European bureaux Ingrassia contrasted what he termed “adrenaline journalism” – the traditional wire service story flow – with “aspiration journalism” – the new investigative writing at length that is now being pushed for editorial operations.

Spot news is still wanted but the benchmark should be set higher, chief correspondents were told. It is up to bureau chiefs to decide where that level will be and what stories can be ignored.

Asked about the business case for such a radical switch in journalistic priorities, the editorial chiefs said the chairman and majority owner David Thomson wants Pulitzers, and this is the only way Thomson Reuters can get them. He is a very rich man – the world’s 17th wealthiest billionaire according to the most recent Forbes magazine reckoning – and that is what he wants, chief correspondents were told.

Thomson admired what Sir Harold Evans, appointed Reuters editor-at-large last June, did with The Sunday Times and its Insight team of investigative journalists when he was the British broadsheet’s editor three decades ago. That is what he wants from Thomson Reuters journalists and that is how it has got to be, the new editorial leaders said.

Adler, appointed editor-in-chief a year ago, said Reuters often wins the newsbreaks and follow-up stories in the weeks and even months after an event but it is not very good at keeping after a story over the long term.

Not everyone can be an investigative reporter at the same time. Bureaux will have to cover day-to-day beats when a specialist reporter is busy on his special report.

Adler said the reuters.com website – re-designed in December 2009 and again last July to make it more “consumer-facing” – will be thoroughly revamped over coming months. It is intended to make the site a window attracting a much wider audience for the organisation’s paying services, partly with special reports. The aim is to make Thomson Reuters a better Financial Times – a “free newspaper on the site” in the words of one of the executives.

Reuters has been on an editorial hiring spree over the past year, attracting high-profile American editors and writers with a pedigree of Pulitzers and other US journalism prizes in their resumés. But the pace of staff turnover is too slow for new and better people to be brought in quickly enough. “We need to be much more strict on performance,” the chief correspondents were told. The new editorial leadership favours longer postings – five or six years and more – if staffers are performing.

The new leadership wants experts on their beats. Travel and entertainment costs linked to special reporting will not be cut. “Our specialists will need to cultivate their sources.”

International assignment packages, of which there are about 300, will be eliminated. ■