Reuters Media president: This will be a golden age of journalism

Among the big-name speakers at WeMedia was Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters Media. Whether by coincidence or design - probably a little of both - Reuters began its push into consumer media just as the industry began to tackle the new frontier of user content and community.

Across that frontier is a future where Reuters would augment its professional journalism with the source material and eyewitness accounts of millions of people around the world. This future, said Ahearn, is one which will be regarded as a golden age of journalism, where reporters work with specialised communities of reliable and trusted sources and stringers, and where technology provides new tools and information that paper-based journalists could only dream about.

How much of the struggle for transformation is internal?

Ahearn said it takes place one person at a time, encouraging interaction with the community, promoting positive ethics and dealing with problems forthrightly.

"But what I have found is that as skeptics start to interact they find there is value there, because these communities aren't just angry people in pyjamas firing off opinions in the middle of the night. They have some really good knowledge in specialist areas."

There's no such thing as perfection, he said, but change is only achievable by taking calculated risks.

"When I think about how I consume media now versus ten years ago, I think there's a new opportunity for the kind of personal relationships people can have with journalists, editors and brands."

The free content conspiracies

He said there is an element of distrust inside some organisations where journalists question the corporate motives of using more and more free community-created content. There have been concerns raised, certainly within the NUJ, that this is a way to cut jobs and get content for free.

"They question if there is a grand scheme by publishers and magazines, but as far as Reuters is concerned nothing could be further from the truth.

"The things we are doing augment our sources and our capabilities, the robustness of our news and the breadth of our news services."

Though he agreed that there are some less scrupulous news organisations exploiting free content, he said that ultimately the business models around this content will become clear.

"People who produce content should be paid, and it's their choice whether they want that in financial capital, or in social capital through the reputation they build.

"Some people aren't doing it for the bucks, they are doing it because they are passionate about it but they should have the opportunity, if someone makes money from that content, to share in that value."

Though he said the issue of micropayments needed to be properly resolved, he pointed to Reuters' recent investment in the user content firm Pluck. Under the collaboration, Reuters now syndicates blog content from Pluck's BlogBurst network and is looking at structures for paying bloggers for content it uses.

"With BlogBurst we are looking to compensate bloggers based on how popular the stories and those sectors are with the publishers that pick them up. We provide it as a syndication service and we will try to feed revenue back to bloggers."

Tagging content

When I asked about his priorities for 2007, Ahearn identified the need for a more integrated way of tagging and sharing content, not just within Reuters, but for its news agency clients.

"We truly need an environment that arms our multimedia desks with the richest and deepest tagged content, whether that's editorial tags or metadata, that relates different pieces of content to one another. We need to do that in a way that allows our news agency clients to amalgamate around that or relate it to what others have, and we need to take some of the pain out of the editorial process."

He also said Reuters needs to build on its work over the past 18 months and introduce more editorial software that will "release pent up human capital". Reuters' investment in new media firms is part of a strategy to introduce more efficient, flexible technologies and systems that will also eventually benefit its news agency clients.

A golden age of journalism

"I see individual blogging as very liberating for journalism," he said.

"Some people snicker, but as soon as we get over this crisis of confidence we will realise that this is a golden age of journalism. I see tools and techniques and methods that allow things paper-based journalists would be so jealous of. It's a different kind of workflow."

He described some "aha" moments as Reuters has developed a better understanding of how its news is used. While Reuters has 2400 professional journalists, it could have a network of 24 million sources.

"As a journalist, there's nothing better than being witness to an event and Reuters specialises in that, but is it not better that if you can't be there, you have reliable people that are?"

We shine flashlights in dark places

Reuters professionalised the concept of a stringer over time, he said, and this will become a new way to find talent.

"The other side of this disruption I can see some really amazing things - journalists who are finding and hearing things differently using new tools and new information. It's hard to hide in this world and we shine flashlights in those places people don't want lit up."

"This is the best job I've ever had and the last job I want to have. I won't give in to the cynicism."

Close