Reuters EIC Adler: We face huge challenges in 2012

Stephen Adler, the editor in chief of Reuters, sent a message to the staff on Wednesday where he said that the business news service faces big challenges in the next year.

The Baron, a site that follows Reuters news, reviewed a copy of the message.

It posted: “‘We must accelerate our pursuit of journalistic excellence, with the understanding that our news is a central resource for Thomson Reuters that must serve all the company’s customers,’ he said in an end-of-year message to editorial staff seen by The Baron.

“‘As we’ve discussed many times, winning in our highly competitive markets requires us to differentiate ourselves by offering more value – not just more of the same. We will succeed by providing a combination of smart, forward-looking news coverage, more exclusives, richer enterprise journalism, effective data mining, memorable story-telling, targeted community-building, trenchant commentary and analysis, and better designed, easier-to-navigate news delivery channels.’

“Adler said: ‘Throughout the year, many of you have asked: How do we remain fast, accurate, and fair while also providing the depth and insight you keep talking about? How do we consider the needs of a broad customer base when we’ve been asked to focus more narrowly in the past? There’s no easy answer, so we will have to ask the right questions with each assignment. Sometimes the value of a story will come from chasing the news and reporting each incremental move. Sometimes it will come from stepping away from the day-to-day to develop a longer-term story that will ultimately benefit the reader more. Often we will need to operate on two tracks simultaneously, with some people focusing on immediate news and others looking beyond the moment to go deeper and help our coverage win not just the hour or day, but the week, month and year. All this requires judgment more than blanket rules, which is why we’ve tried to cut down on many of the edicts.'”

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