“Scary” prospects for newspapers: Thomson Reuters CEO

Times are scary for newspapers, but news agencies are benefiting from the big shifts in the media industry, Thomson Reuters chief executive Thomas Glocer said at a conference here.

“It’s a scary time to be in the newspapers business,” Glocer said Wednesday at the All Things Digital conference here.

“But as long as the patient doesn’t die, it’s fantastic for the agency world. Everyone is pulling reporting staffs back to home base, so they are even more dependent on news agencies,” he said.

“And in this terrible economic crunch, they have to make websites 24 hours, plus they need videos and photos.”

Glocer said at the conference, sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, that the benefits of newspapers cutting back staff due to subscriber and advertising loss have already accrued to his online news and financial information distribution giant.

“Our agency business has been growing 10 to 20 percent a year for the past few years. It’s three percent of the total revenues,” or around 200 million dollars, he said.

“We get to write (stories) once, and sell multiple times.”

Thomson Reuters was created on April 17 Canadian media giant Thomson Corp’s takeover of Britain-based Reuters.

On Monday the newly-merged company said it was going to axe up to 835 jobs, as part of an anticipated wider cull, including 140 editorial jobs at the Reuters News division

Thomson Reuters — which competes with, among others, Agence France-Presse (AFP) — had plans to develop specialized news feeds for scientists and lawyers, as part of the further evolution of the news agency business, Glocer said.

“I see agency business end up just an electronic exchange platform, purely mutualized,” he said.

“We’ll see a mix of arguably more comments from high talent sources, and openness to aggregate other voices.”

He gave the example of a recent service the company developed in India delivering crop prices and weather reports to farmers on their mobile phones. “In phase two, you can contract over the phone,” he added.

He also said Thomson Reuters would promote and exploit “citizen journalism” — the contributions of non-professional journalists snapping pictures of events with cellphones and reporting their experiences on website.

“The third circle is citizen journalism.”

“I’ve been a big advocate of opening the doors and make it one long continuum between citizen journalists and somebody who might be 20 years at Reuters.”

“It doesn’t matter that you are a Pulitzer prize photographer if you are there with your cell phone.”

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