Reuters executives deny 'Pulitzer pursuit' report

The 23 February report on The Baron said European chief correspondents had been told about the new approach and other editorial matters at a briefing in London. It said: “Reuters is adopting a new editorial approach aimed at winning Pulitzer Prizes: long, in-depth, investigative special reports from all bureaux.” The report was based on accounts of the briefing by participants.

The Newspaper Guild of New York, a union which represents 430 Thomson Reuters employees, picked up the report on 7 March in its online publication Common Sense under the heading “Pulitzer Prize Pursuit”.

The denial was made to the Guild by Stuart Karle, chief operating officer for Reuters news, and Paul Ingrassia, deputy editor-in-chief. Both vigorously denied the report, the Guild said on Tuesday. “Karle and Ingrassia called the idea ‘stupid,’ with Ingrassia adding that it would be foolish to make Pulitzer Prizes a goal, given the slight chance of winning one,” it said. The Guild quoted Karle as saying the report was factually incorrect and based on a flawed premise. He said managers had gone through the list of journalism prizes to weed out those with a “corporate mission”. “You do this stuff (quality journalism) because it’s a good in itself,” he said. “It’s explicitly not a goal to win prizes.”

The Guild said neither Karle nor Ingrassia categorically denied what it called a more troubling aspect of The Baron report: the notion that the pace of staff turnover is too slow “for new and better people to be brought in quickly enough.” When asked about that, both said they had received reports of journalists “underperforming” and “not pulling their weight,” but said their main objective is to improve performance.

“Separately, the Guild has heard from numerous sources since last year that the Adler administration wants to use the performance management system to ‘manage out’ veteran journalists to make way for ‘stars’ picked by the new team,” it said. “This is a serious concern, given the parlous nature of the performance management system and the new contract language that performance management cannot be used in discipline. The Guild has already filed two grievances on issues related to this, including one that is scheduled for an arbitration hearing, and we’re continuing to monitor management’s actions closely.”

Reuters’ deputy opinion editor Paul Smalera, in an article on the media business on Monday, wrote: “Online media companies (including my own… ) have been investing serious cash in upgrading the quality of their reporting and have made no secret of gunning for their print counterparts when it comes to journalism awards, including the granddaddy of them all, the Pulitzer.”

The Baron stands by its story. ■