Rebuked Reuters.com editor leaves for second time

“They say third time’s the charm. So I am ending my second stint at Reuters this Friday,” he said in a message to colleagues. “It’s been an amazing three years, mostly, of big challenges, new ideas and the finest team I have ever worked with. Now it’s time for something new.”

Li first joined Reuters in 2003 in New York as global media correspondent and left in 2008 to become media correspondent at the Financial Times. He re-joined in 2010 as editor-in-charge of US technology, media and telecommunications coverage before becoming editor of reuters.com.

In May this year Reuters reprimanded Li and two other editors – Anthony De Rosa and Robert MacMillan – for failing to tell their superiors that the home of deputy social media editor Matthew Keys was searched by the FBI after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on three criminal counts alleging he helped members of the Anonymous collective to hack into a newspaper’s computer systems. Keys was fired, although the indictment indicated the alleged events occurred before he joined Reuters. 

Li lost his job as reuters.com editor and became an editor at large. The other two journalists involved were given letters of reprimand. De Rosa subsequently left the company.

Shortly after Keys’s indictment he told a group of other managers – including chief operating officer Stuart Karle, global editor for ethics and standards Alix Freedman and digital executive editor Jim Roberts – that he had told Li and De Rosa about the FBI search. It appeared that Jim Impoco, who was executive editor of Reuters digital, was told about the raid by either Li or De Rosa in 2012. Impoco and Roberts are no longer with the company. Karle’s departure was announced last month.

Li was reticent about what comes next. “Working on something hot/cool. Or whatever the millenials call it these days,” he wrote on Twitter.

SOURCE ■ Talking Biz News ■