Reuters editor Adler talks future staffing

Capital New York interviewed Reuters editor in chief Stephen Adler about the news organization and its staffing.

Here is an excerpt:

CAPITAL: Do you think there’ll have to be additional cuts this year, or is it too early to say?
ADLER: I’m not especially… I’m not anticipating cuts, per se, but I think we always should be looking for how best to use the funds we have. I think sometimes when people move things from one area to another, that’s misinterpreted as a negative reaction to bad things happening. But I would say, very often, what it is is people who are trying to be good businesspeople are trying to put money where we think it can best be used, so that we have a stronger future and we’re in more areas that are growing.
By the way, that has a lot to do with the market. I think a lot of times people look at it as an internal issue, but it’s actually—if you look at the market and how fast the market is changing, and if you want to make sure your news organization is changing to fit the needs, then sometimes that means reducing some services so you can add to others.
CAPITAL: Jack Shafer was one of the staffers laid off last year. Will we see media commentary going forward in Reuters, or is it mostly going to be focused on industry reporting?
ADLER: Well, we made a strategic decision that didn’t just affect Jack, but a number of people. Studying our commentary and opinion coverage, we discovered that we did a lot better with our readers when we focused our commentary on news events that were occurring pretty much as they were occurring. Because people really come to the site—come to a lot of news sites—because they get interested about something that’s happening.