Andrew Rashbass: Reuters.com 'better within weeks'

Reuters.com will have real-world improvements in the next five or six weeks, he told staff during an hour-long meeting in New York.

Mobile apps developed for Reuters Next, which had been in the works for more than two years, will be “re-platformed”. Reuters will begin to serve video properly and re-design the website to make it look more modern. Rashbass said he did not expect the apps to survive Next’s closure, but “It looks like we will be able to rescue those apps. I see that as a huge bonus.”

“Every few weeks, the website will get better” rather than “in 12 months time there will be an all-singing, all-dancing site”.

US managing editor Brian Tracey asked what the company learned from Reuters Next. “If you drive looking in the rear view mirror, you crash, really,” Rashbass replied, explaining that he does not like looking backwards. But in terms of lessons learned, “We have to be realistic about how big projects are and then be very, very wary of projects that cost tens of millions of dollars and take years. The risk is just too great.”

The meeting came amid what The New York Observer described as tumult at the company. Following the closure of Next, Reuters editor-in-chief and president Stephen Adler last week announced a cut of around five per cent across editorial.

Rashbass said Reuters should aspire to be the world’s greatest news organisation. There was no obvious organisation that would wear the crown now, so he did not think it was about knocking someone off the top spot.

Profitability was very important for editorial independence. “If you look across the great editorial organisations of the world, the thing that primarily gives them the latitude to write what they write is profitability. The fact the money runs out is the thing that causes the greatest threat to editorial independence.”

The route to sustainable, growing profitability was always going to be about growing the top line. That meant finding new things to do and that meant different kinds of investment.

Rashbass disclosed that Adler was running a project on social media. “The challenge is like that faced by Encyclopaedia Britannica when Encarta came along. Encyclopaedia Britannica would not have recognised the challenge from Wikipedia, because they would say there’s no curation, etc. they would have not seen the threat from Wikipedia.

“In 10 per cent of our most important stories Twitter is there first… We have a team working on this. We’re looking to see if we can marshall some of that power for breaking news.

Rashbass said the company would expand the use of social media in breaking news but he gave no specifics. “I can announce formally that we are not acquiring Twitter,” Rashbass said to what sounded like laughter from the conference room.

In general, Rashbass said that the company was more likely to build than to acquire technology. “I’m open to acquisition but we have no acquisitions geared up. Reuters is not looking to acquire anything.”

Rashbass said Reuters would be hiring significant numbers of journalists over the next 12 months to work in emerging markets, but he mostly avoided commenting on the editorial cuts that Adler announced last week.

Rashbass said News Pictures was not profitable but “We believe we can take it to profitability relatively easily... Make it easier for consumers to buy things from us... Do a bit on the financial side... Make pictures more discoverable...  Make action images better.”

Asked what areas he would cut back, Rashbass said: “I haven’t identified areas where I think we should be spending less. I need to see the analysis of where the profitability is. And when I see that I hope that the route to profitability is obvious.”

He was also asked and whether the Thomson family, the organisation’s majority owners, told him what profit to target. He answered: “I don’t think they are sitting there with a target for profitability.”

Rashbass, who joined Reuters in July, is due to hold a similar meeting with staff in London. ■