Cullen resigns from Reuters

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Terri Cullen, who joined Reuters last month as its wealth management editor, is now gone from the news service, less than a week after the wire was forced to pull one of her stories about a White House tax plan after numerous errors were discovered.

A Reuters spokeswoman confirmed her departure, but declined further comment. Cullen apparently resigned.

The story claimed the White House’s deficit reduction plan relied on raising taxes against the middle class by allowing tax cuts to expire. It ran on Monday, but was pulled that night.

Then, on Wednesday, a top Reuters editor sent out a memo stating, “This is an important reminder about our second-pair-of-eyes rule… Any content intended for reuters.com needs to be run past an editor PRIOR to publication. This applies to any and all content, including that intended for the blog platform.”

Cullen’s hiring last month had been trumpeted by Reuters. Cullen was picked to serve as both editor of personal investing coverage on Reuters.com as well as the editorial lead for Reuters wealth management initiative, a new service due out later this year supposed to leverage Thomson Reuters business to business wealth assets in an effort to create an online consumer offering for Reuters.com’s audience of affluent, business professionals.

In 1995, Cullen was instrumental in the launch of The Wall Street Journal Online, and for the 13 years following, served as an editor and columnist overseeing personal finance and financial markets coverage for WSJ.com. She left the Journal in August 2008.