Reuters is not for sale, chiefs tell staff

They told editors and journalists from its European bureaux at a two-day briefing in London last week that they had no intention of selling off the group’s editorial division after reshaping it with a separate management structure last month.

According to an account of the meeting that participants later communicated to other editorial staff, the executives – who included Reuters’ chief operating officer Stuart Karle and finance and administration head David Craig with editor-in-chief Stephen Adler joining by video-link from New York – also said their message for 2013 was that news for screen clients is the absolute priority, that it was vital to concentrate on the financial client base, and that as part of that strategy there would be a drive to sell more Eikon terminals, the flagship platform launched two years ago to a mixed reception and disappointing take-up by clients.

The executives themselves made no mention of the editorial structure change and what might lie behind it, according to the account, but “totally rejected” the sell-off idea, which had been the subject of widespread speculation among staff, in response to a question. Different participants said the message was that a spin-off of news “would be a disaster” and “made no sense” because news “is at the core of the whole operation”.

The executives set out their priorities for 2013 as:

• Developing Reuters’ presence in on-line communities and chat rooms – where they said Bloomberg had a strong foothold
• Digging down deeper in corporate reporting by bringing in coverage of medium and small cap companies and supply chain firms. A start would be made on this in sectors like oil, gas and mining
• Boosting emerging markets cover, in particular Africa which was seen as “extremely important”
• Developing Eikon for iPad and similar devices, and launching the new website which would include video for news display. What was wanted was “the best website in the business”
• Establishing ways of measuring news performance better by finalising a reliable way of determining readership.

Bloomberg was identified as the biggest competitor, not Google as some had suggested. As a private company, it could throw its cash around, but was struggling to break into areas where Thomson Reuters is strong, like legal. The meeting was told that many potential clients were saying they did not like Bloomberg and wanted Reuters to “come back so that we can dump them for you”.

The account of the briefing obtained by The Baron made no reference to recent staff cuts in editorial and other divisions, details of which have not been officially announced and are only becoming known piecemeal. Nor, apparently, did the executives hold out any hope of extra staff to handle the new areas of coverage. However, they did say they wanted more routine news to be increasingly automated “to free up journalists to do their real jobs”. They said external hiring would be continued “when it makes sense” – when there was a strong candidate who would make a difference to news coverage. But if this was done “we will have to make adjustments elsewhere”.

For the new website, which is due to be launched by the end of March, the aim was for it to be in all major languages by the end of 2013. ■