Reuters editor in chief Alessandra Galloni sent out the following to the staff:
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce some important changes in our Newsroom Operations team. These changes have a single goal: to better serve our journalists, our newsroom, and our journalism.
We are tweaking the existing Ops structure to make it nimbler and focused on key strategic activities.
Broadly, the members of the Operations team will fall into two groups. The first group will focus, as now, on each of our seven editorial regions. Working together with the regional news editors and other leaders, these General Managers will run newsroom operations and bring their deep local knowledge and expertise to everything from newsroom structure to job offers and budgets.
One big change from the current set up: each regional General Manager will now be responsible for all the journalists in their region, rather than dividing tasks depending on whether a journalist is from the text or visuals side of the file.
The second, smaller group will focus on challenges and issues we need to deal with at a global level, including:
•How to better align our newsroom with our clients’ needs
•Identifying which roles we want to add, not only now but in the next few years
•Working with contractors
•How to better attract, develop, and retain talent and make sure it builds a newsroom that better reflects the world we cover, and
•How to provide the tools our journalists need to work at their best.
People are front and center of everything we do, and the Ops team will work with a people-centric mindset and empathy. Our decisions will be based on simple, fair, and transparent policies.
General managers will spend part of their time visiting newsrooms and working with colleagues and managers on the ground. We hope to connect with as many of you as possible to discuss what we do well but most importantly what we need to improve. Please message or call us with feedback and suggestions. We’re very keen to hear from you.
Here is our new Ops team, including some new faces who are joining us from elsewhere in the newsroom. You can find additional information about each member here [add Atrium link].
•Helen Long becomes a Global General Manager. In this new role, Helen will focus on strategic workforce planning and work with our global and regional editors, including Nick Tattersall, to set and execute our hiring strategy globally. She will also oversee our budget.
•Amran Abocar is appointed a Global General Manager. Amran will work very closely with Nick Tattersall and Joyce Adeluwoye-Adams to double down on our efforts to attract, develop and keep the best talent at Reuters.
•Richard Baum remains a Global General Manager. Richard will focus on customers, working closely with Jane Barrett, Jonathan Leff and Yann Tessier in the newsroom as well as with our business-side colleagues Sue Brooks, Carol Fox, and Josh London to make sure our operations and our newsroom are as aligned as possible with our clients’ needs.
•Wiebke Singer is appointed a Global General Manager. Wiebke will be responsible for key parts of our budget, including big events, travel and mobility, editorial equipment, and day-to-day expenses. She will also oversee real estate.
•April Richter remains a Global General Manager and will keep overseeing the 2,500 or so contractors who work for Reuters around the globe.
•Jason Subler will remain General Manager for North Asia and Australasia. He will also launch two global initiatives: one to further improve the support we give to our busy managers so that they can spend more of their time on the file; and the other to make our newsroom operation more environmentally sustainable.
•Karishma Singh is promoted to General Manager for South Asia and our Singapore office. A 15-year veteran of Reuters, Karishma has worked as a pictures editor and a global news desk editor.
•Lakshmi Siddappa remains General Manager for Bangalore and will now take on the visuals and production teams in that bureau, the single biggest in our newsroom.
•Maria Sheahan and Anna Valderrama are appointed General Managers for Europe, including our Gdansk newsroom. They will each take the lead on separate countries and topics but work very closely together to manage our biggest editorial region in terms of staff.
•Pablo Garibian and Joe Shaw are appointed General Managers for North America. Pablo will retain his role as GM for Latin America, including our fast-growing Mexico newsroom, and will add Canada and our global operation in New York to his remit. Joe will handle all issues across the United States outside of New York
•Simon Gardner remains General Manager, Ukraine. Simon has been overseeing our Ukraine operations since last summer, including working with our safety team to ensure the safety of our journalists covering the conflict.
•Marius Bosch, who has been our GM for Middle East and Africa for the last 10 years, will remain a General Manager but will take on a new position to manage operational risk in our most challenging countries. This role will stand at the intersection of security, finance and logistic. Marius will be in charge of identifying key risks to our operations and managing them together with editorial security colleagues and other Reuters and TR stakeholders.
We will soon advertise for General Manager, Middle East and General Manager, Africa. We will also be appointing Global Operations Managers and Senior Administrators in each of our regions to better support our local newsrooms. Please reach out to either of us or any of the GMs if you want more information about those positions.
Thanks, and best,
Alessandra and Julien
