Reuters sees no benefit in British ties

1641923 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:01:00 GMT

News that Reuters, the long-established bastion of British news gathering, looks set to disappear from the London Stock Exchange passed without much comment last week, instead cold pragmatism was the order of the day.

The board of the now Thomson Reuters enterprise unanimously agreed that “unifying the company's capital structure is in the best interests of all shareholders”.

Simply put, by consolidating the company’s four listings to just two, the aim is to improve the take home for shareholders.

The shareholders vote on 7 August looks set to be a mere formality, resulting in Thomson Reuters remaining on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange but no longer part of the LSE or the Nasdaq.

It will signal another step away from Reuter’s strong British roots, which it has held for more than 150 years. Earlier this year, the company announced its official headquarters were now in the New York.

The HQ of the news giant used to be synonymous with Fleet Street, and was the last major news provider to severe its central London ties when it moved in June 2005.

It has been one of the UK’s most successful exports and set the benchmark for international news output long before the BBC was even a glint in John Reith’s eye.

But time marches on. Reuters has been expertly led by American Tom Glocer for almost eight years now, and following its “merger” (actually a buyout) with Canadian giant Thomson last year, UK shareholders (not too long ago 50%) constituted just 5% of its new combined base.

For one of the world’s best known and most respected global operations, which has operated out of London since 1851, there appears to be no discernable value left in being British.

Spinning a Googley

917990 — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:53:00 GMT

A study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University has suggested that now newswire services can send stories direct to consumers through the proliferating digital channels, traditional newspapers may end up ‘disintermediated’ – a word my spell check can’t deal with which means, I think, cutting out the middle man.

If proved right, this could have seismic repercussions for the quality and tone of received news. If stories at source (e.g. press releases) are not ‘intermediated’ by established gatekeeper journalists, their contents will need to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

On the upside, less intermediated news means less negative spin which would be welcome to many like the man who phoned the BBC yesterday to ask what he should say to his eleven year old daughter who asked him why the news was always so ‘horrible’.

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Reuters sees no benefit in British ties

Spinning a Googley