Thomson Reuters staff prepare for strike action

Posted by Paul McNally on 7 June 2008 at 13:32
Tags: Agencies

Staff at the newly merged global news agency Thomson Reuters have passed a resolution at a well-attended union meeting which could see them walk out on strike.

According to the Guardian, the NUJ has warned that “industrial action will follow swiftly if [management] does not moderate its behaviour and start to negotiate in an adult fashion”.

IHT editor moves to AP role in US

Posted by Martin Stabe on 16 May 2008 at 07:00
Tags: Agencies, National Newspapers

Executive editor Michael Oreskes is leaving the International Herald Tribune to join the Associated Press in the newly-created role of managing editor for United States news, the New York Times reports.

New York Times editor Bill Keller declined to comment on whether the Paris-based IHT would continue to have a separate editor as it is being more closely integrated with its New York sister paper.

Thomson Reuters Markets boss seeks to calm troops ahead of redundancies news

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 15 May 2008 at 11:48
Tags: Agencies, Journalism

As Thomson Reuters gears up to announce what it calls “integration related redundancies” - CEO of Thomson Reuters Markets Division Devin Wenig has sent out an email explaining a little more about the company’s plans.

Press Gazette has obtained a copy and reproduces it here:

“Dear Thomson Reuters Markets Colleagues:

I’ve recently spent a lot of time visiting with colleagues around the world discussing our new company. I know that top of mind for many is the question of potential job losses resulting from our integration.

It’s no secret that a significant amount of thought and planning has been dedicated to eliminating duplication and generating savings within our business. I want to reiterate what I have said in person to many of you, which is that it is crucial that we get this right - for our people, our customers and our shareholders. We now have sufficient clarity that I can communicate to you our immediate plans.

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Media Standards Trust and Tim Berners-Lee among Knight News Challenge grant winners

Posted by Martin Stabe on 15 May 2008 at 10:05
Tags: Agencies, New Media, Regional Newspapers

Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust, working with web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the Web Science Research Initiative are among the  winners of the 2008 Knight News Challenge.

The group won a $350,000 (£179,000) award to fund “Transparent Journalism“, a project to help the public find “fair, accurate and contextual news” online by improving the metadata in online news stories.

The project aims to “design a way for content creators to add information on their sources to their reports, as a form of ’source tagging.’”Filters could then be used to help identify high-quality journalism online using this meta-data. Sir Tim, Moore and the Web Science Research Initiative are already working with the BBC and Reuters on integrating tagging into journalists routine workflow.

The Media Standards Trust also already runs Journalisted, a website that aggregates UK national news stories and tags it with information about individual journalists.

The Knight News Challenge, funded by the US-based Knight Foundation, annually provide grants of up to $5 million towards the development of digital news innovations that benefit a specific geographically-based community.

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Bloomberg seeking magazine, broadcast and online expansion

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 May 2008 at 09:52
Tags: Agencies, Magazines, Online, Radio, Television

Bloomberg has appointed the former editor-in-chief of Time Inc magazines, Norm Pearlstine, to the new role of chief content officer with a remit to expand the financial newswire’s activities in other media.

Bloomberg editor-in-chief Matt Winkler told the Financial Times that Pearlstine would seek growth for Bloomberg’s television, radio, magazine and online products.

Pearlstine, who leaves a job as a media advisor to the Carlyle Group, told the FT he would take time to learn about Bloomberg’s businesses before deciding how the company could expand its magazine portfolio beyond Bloomberg Markets.

Thomson Reuters redundancy news expected this week

Posted by Paul McNally on 11 May 2008 at 14:35
Tags: Agencies

Thomson Reuters will this week announce plans to axe up to 2,500 jobs, according to the Observer.

The paper says the at the newly merged global news agency is looking to save £375m over the next three years, with analysts predicting five per cent of the workforce could be laid off because of overlaps between the two firms.

Educators debate: Do journalists still need shorthand?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 8 May 2008 at 09:17
Tags: Agencies, Journalism, Magazines, National Newspapers, Online, Regional Newspapers, Student Journalism

Journalism educators validating various courses yesterday discussed whether journalists still need to be taught shorthand, Charlie Beckett of the Polis journalism thinktank notes on his blog.

Beckett sums up the debate as being about course priorities when teaching time is limited: “In a world of new media where everything is digitised and where so much of journalism is about re-working material, do you need to devote 100 hours to teaching 80 words per minute of scribble?

Both he and the Observer sports journalist Denis Campbell were firmly in the pro-Teeline camp. But Beckett also wonders: “Those of us who have shorthand like to think that it is vital, but is it any more important than an ability to type fast enough for Twitter?”

Update 22/5: As the debate rumbles on, Beckett has noted in the comments below that he would not consider himself “firmly” in the pro-shorthand camp, as I wrote. He has also added a longer extract to the original post.

VirginMedia.com relaunches news site with PA content

Posted by Martin Stabe on 7 May 2008 at 09:48
Tags: Agencies, Online

Virgin Media has re-launched the news section of VirginMedia.com using multimedia content and custom-built microsites from the Press Association.

PA will supply Virgin Media with a package of text, photos, graphics and video news.

The relauched site will include video clips embedded in news pages, and longer video news packages. The site will present a major story of the day as “The Big Story”, packaged with related interactive graphics, video and photo galleries.

Bloomberg in ’sexual discrimination’ claim

Posted by Paul McNally on 4 May 2008 at 13:08
Tags: Agencies, Law

Financial news agency Bloomberg is facing sexual discrimination claims from more than 50 female employees, according to the Independent.

The US equal employment opportunity commission is filing the lawsuit on behalf of the 58 women, who claim their pay was cut or they were demoted after returning to work from maternity leave.

Thomson Reuters looks to automate story-writing

Posted by Paul McNally on 29 April 2008 at 15:16
Tags: Agencies, Online

Thomson Reuters has confirmed it is looking to automate the writing of its more throwaway financial stories, such as those generated from regulatory filings and press releases.

Betty Wong, the global managing editor for Reuters News, told the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference : “We are also continuing to automate ‘commoditized’ work from press release and exchange news feeds.”

Wong said the move would free up reporters to focus on “enterprise reporting and breaking news in the field”.

Richard Desmond and Barclays top journalism Rich List

Posted by Paul McNally on 28 April 2008 at 07:45
Tags: Agencies, Magazines, Media Business, National Newspapers, New Media, Regional Newspapers

The Sunday Times this week published its annual Rich List. Here are some of the top earners in journalism.

35th - Richard Desmond - £1.9bn
40th - The Barclay twins - £1.7bn
101st - Felix Dennis - £750m
113th - The Pearson family - £720m
121st - The Thomson family - £670m
137th - Viscount Rothermere - £600m
158th - David Sullivan (Sport Newspapers) - £500m
214th - John Madejski (Auto Trader) - £400m
239th - Mark Getty (Getty Images) - £370m
325th - Lord Heseltine (Haymarket) - £250m
362nd - Sir Ray Tindle - £225m

The Independent on Sunday, meanwhile, has drawn a top 100 “happy list” of people who have “given something back and enhanced the lives of others”.

Among the entries are Daily Telegraph cartoonist Matt Pritchett, Radio 4 journalist Jenni Murray… and Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies.

Hat trick for Bloomberg, BBC and FT at business awards

Posted by Paul McNally on 25 April 2008 at 14:58
Tags: Agencies, National Newspapers, Television

Bloomberg, the BBC and the Financial Times have each won three awards at last night’s Business Journalist of the Year awards.

The awards, which recognise the work of business writers and broadcasters, are open to journalists of all nationalities and are voted by senior journalists from the FT, BBC, Wall Street Journal and Fortune.

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City job cuts expected to hit Thomson Reuters

Posted by Paul McNally on 21 April 2008 at 06:55
Tags: Agencies, Journalism

A cull of several thousand jobs in the City is likely to have a negative impact on the newly-merged Thomson Reuters, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

“All of a sudden there are fewer bankers and traders who need the information that Thomson Reuters provides,” the paper says. Shares in the new global news agency floated on Thursday and nosedived within hours.

Rupert Murdoch gets a seat on Associated Press board

Posted by Paul McNally on 21 April 2008 at 05:55
Tags: Agencies

Rupert Murdoch has joined the board of the Associated Press, according to the Independent on Sunday’s media diary, Feral Beast.

Thomson Reuters shares fall in first day of business

Posted by Paul McNally on 18 April 2008 at 08:21
Tags: Agencies, Journalism

Thomson and Reuters officially tied the knot yesterday morning, and shares in the newly merged global news agency have already taken a battering.

By the end of the day in London, shares in Thomson Reuters had fallen from 1743.75p to 1560p - a slump of around 10.5 per cent.

In a post on the Reuters Editors blog, editor-in-chief David Schlesinger said the company would combine the staff and services of the previous Reuters news and from Thomson Financial news operations.

“Most of the difference will be seen immediately on our desktop products for financial professionals, but over time I’m sure you’ll see new bylines and data on our Reuters Media consumer-facing sites as well,” Schlesinger wrote.

The Times, meanwhile, says jobs at the global news giant could be cut “within weeks”. A large number of redundancies is unlikely, but there will be a significant overlap between the two businesses, the paper says.

The Globe & Mail in Toronto reports that the merged company’s chief executive Tom Glocer has confirmd that there will be job losses, but that “he expects them to be relatively minor because there’s little overlap (with the possible exception of real estate)”. Two of the three Tokyo offices are set to be axed, the Globe & Mail reports.

Reuters releases final video from cameraman killed in Gaza

Posted by Martin Stabe on 17 April 2008 at 11:29
Tags: Agencies

Reuters has released the final video shot by its cameraman Fadel Shana, who was killed yesterday in Gaza.

The video from Shana’s camera shows an Israeli tank opening fire. Two seconds later, the tape goes blank, apparently at the moment Shana was hit.

A medical examination conducted today suggests that Shana was killed by controversial weapons known as flechettes — small metal darts from tank shells that explode in mid-air.

Spash paparazzi named in Heath Ledger lawsuit

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 14 April 2008 at 09:02
Tags: Agencies, Law, Photography

Two paparazzi working for LA-based Splash News and Pictures have been accused of supplying late Hollywood actor Heath Ledger with cocaine and then secretly filming him snorting the drug, the Independent on Sunday reported.

Footage of the set up is reported to have been sold to various media outlets for more than £500,000. The accusations have come in a lawsuit filed on Friday by a woman who featured in some of the footage and has claimed her privacy was violated.

Splash is owned and mainly staffed by UK journalists.