Reuters.co.uk relaunches: Mainstream consumer focus
- Added:
- Apr 23, 2010
Today’s relaunch of Reuters.co.uk marks a clear shift into mainstream consumer-facing publishing and the promotion of a consumer facing brand. For the news network that supports tens of thousands of media titles, this clear expansion signals a broadening business model and new vehicle for corporate marketers.
Reuters was among the first media groups to deliver content digitally, with their own networks pre-dating the web. The migration into web publishing in the 90s was a natural stepping stone, but for a business that made heavyweight revenues from supplying news feeds to publishers and broadcasters, their consumer-facing channels have been relatively small scale till now given the size of the Thomson Reuters machine behind them.
That’s now changing, with the business confidently adopting a blended model in which it provides raw news and content to others while publishing its own directly. Commercially this will be welcomed by corporate advertisers looking to reach a business audience and finding ways of aligning their brands to the quality content Reuters is famous for. UK agency media planners told us that in spite of the oversupply of inventory in the consumer markets, there is a significant shortage at the top end of the business markets.
Powering the Reuters news business is a news gathering network of 2,800 journalists in 190 different bureaus worldwide. This is bolstered by a massive network of stringers and freelancers, which is why the broadening the audience has significant implications for news media companies anywhere from the USA to Iraq.
“News has been in our blood for more than a century and a half, but we’ve always been restlessly innovating and always looking to the future”, explains David Schlesinger, Reuters’ Editor-in-chief.
“We want people to be able to come for a quick glance at the top headlines, or a longer deep dive into a topic that’s important for them”, explains Schlesinger. “We want people to scan the output of the 2,800 men and women or hone in on a favourite writer or photographer”.
New features include deep personalization, new navigation, a broader range of content, and more access to the Thomson Reuters resources behind the scenes. Schlesinger is clear that today’s relaunch is being followed by further significant developments: “This is just the beginning. In the coming months, we will continue to roll out new features and functionality”.
More: www.Reuters.co.uk
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