Reuters editor in chief: We are full speed ahead

Reuters editor in chief Steve Adler spoke with Marketwatch.com media columnist Jon Friedman and said a new CEO of the news organization’s parent company, Thomson Reuters, won’t curtail its growth.

Friedman writes, “When I spoke with Adler on Monday, he couldn’t have sounded more confident that Smith, who will replace Tom Glocer on Jan. 1, will continue to have ‘an extraordinary commitment’ to Adler’s strategy of investing heavily to strengthen its commitment to enterprise reporting and to recruit journalists such as The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Williams and Bloomberg News television executive Dan Colarusso, who will run its video operations (The Journal, like MarketWatch, is owned by News Corp. )

“Adler said he, too, has heard the whispers from Thomson Reuters’ critics but declared: ‘This doesn’t change anything.’

“What’s also not likely to change is the industry’s confusion about what Adler wants to accomplish. Does he want his operation to be true to its roots as a British-based wire service that reports doggedly on financial markets or a gleaming long-form journalism operation that wants to be known for its enterprise and investigative reporting? Can Adler make both sides co-exist?

“Is Thomson Reuters, which was formed a few years ago, still a British concern to its core? Or does it want to be viewed as a distinctly American company? Adler shrugs off such questions and prefers to think of Thomson Reuters as a ‘global’ company that can tell the world’s stories.

“Still, Adler’s moves to bolster the enterprise-reporting wing spark the question: Where do Reuters’ customers, who depend on the company to give them real-time market-moving information, fit into the equation? They may not be too impressed that Reuters, for instance, has added Bethany McLean, the respected magazine journalist and co-author of ‘All the Devils Are Here.'”

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