Reuters wins big on the big stories - Flight 17 and Gaza

On 18 July, the day after Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was brought down, managing editor Paul Ingrassia received an e-mail from Mark Porter, Reuters’ embedded editor at Yahoo!, one of its major customers.

“This morning Beau Brendler, Yahoo’s managing news editor, came over to me and shook my hand,” Porter wrote. “He said Yahoo was thrilled with our coverage… our pictures and stories were fast and full of the things they were looking for. And we beat AP numerous times, especially with the photos. He asked that this be shared with any and all Reuters personnel.”

The previous day saw Reuters at its finest in pursuit of a breaking global story, Ingrassia said in a note to editorial staff. “Dozens of colleagues contributed to our coverage around the globe.”

On the week’s other big story, Reuters coverage of Gaza prompted another client, Britain’s Sky News, to say: "Reuters have consistently won on this story. We couldn't have done our programming without them.” 

“Our coverage of Flight 17 and the Gaza fighting should evoke pride and admiration,” Ingrassia said. “And even while covering two such overarching stories, we produced a strong stream of other critical coverage. We had two big snapping wins on interest rate decisions, beating Bloomberg by five seconds on an unexpected South African rate rise and by 23 seconds on a Turkish rate cut. Both decisions moved the currencies.”

It was “a week of news coverage that should make us all proud to be part of Reuters”. ■