(Adds quote from Galloni)
April 12 (Reuters) - Reuters News has named one of its top
editors, Alessandra Galloni, as its next editor-in-chief, the
first woman to lead the globe-spanning news agency in its
170-year history.
A native of Rome, Galloni, 47, will replace Stephen J.
Adler, who is retiring this month after leading the newsroom for
the past decade. Under his leadership, Reuters has received
hundreds of journalism awards, including seven Pulitzer Prizes,
the industry’s highest honor.
A speaker of four languages, and with broad experience
covering business and political news at Reuters and previously
at the Wall Street Journal, Galloni takes the helm as the news
agency faces an array of challenges. Some of these are common to
all news media. Others are specific to the organization’s
complexity: With a worldwide staff of some 2,450 journalists,
Reuters serves a range of divergent customers and is also a unit
in a much larger information-services business.
Since 2008, Reuters has been part of Thomson Reuters Corp
, a corporation with more-lucrative and
faster-growing segments than news. Its chief executive, Steve
Hasker, who joined Thomson Reuters last year, has focused on
aggressively expanding the corporation’s three largest
businesses: providing information, software and services to
lawyers, corporations and the tax and accounting profession.
Hasker’s strategy has helped boost Thomson Reuters stock to
all-time highs.
Reuters News comprises about 10% of Thomson Reuters’ total
$5.9 billion in revenues. Unlike many news organizations,
Reuters is profitable. But it is also a drag on the parent
company’s revenue growth and profit margin, analysts say, and
the executive who runs the news business, Reuters President
Michael Friedenberg, is pushing to increase sales and boost
profitability. Looking forward, Thomson Reuters’ chief financial
officer last month forecast that sales at its “Big Three”
businesses are expected to grow 6% to 7% in 2023, while its news
division and printing business “are expected to dilute organic
revenue growth by about 1% to 2%.”
Gary Bisbee, an analyst at Bank of America, said he expects
Reuters News “will continue to be a drag on the growth of the
company,” but added that as other divisions of Thomson Reuters
grow faster, that drag would diminish over time.
Thomson Reuters is hoping for a turn-around in the Reuters
Events business, which it acquired in October 2019. Almost all
in-person conferences last year were canceled or postponed
because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the business has pivoted
to a hybrid events strategy for 2021 with both in-person and
virtual conferences, and expects its revenues to improve.
While some in the industry have speculated that Thomson
Reuters might want to sell the news division, three analysts
said they don’t expect a sale. Douglas McCabe, a media analyst
with Enders Analysis in London, said Reuters is “a tremendously
powerful part of” the Thomson Reuters brand, and that “the
mighty Reuters newsroom behind you and all the really
specialized business assets is a great combination.”
In a statement, CEO Hasker said: “Thomson Reuters is
committed to the future of Reuters News. It is an important part
of the company and is valued across our customer base. The last
year has proven beyond question the value of independent,
global, unbiased journalism.”
This year saw the closing of a deal in which the former
Financial and Risk business of Thomson Reuters -- now called
Refinitiv -- was sold to the London Stock Exchange Group Plc
in a $27 billion all-stock deal. Under the terms,
Reuters News is guaranteed annual payments of at least $336
million to provide news and editorial content to Refinitiv until
2048. That stream of revenue is envied by many in the media
industry.
Galloni has told colleagues that one of her critical tasks
would be maintaining a good relationship with Refinitiv, as it
is Reuters’ biggest customer, accounting for slightly more than
half of the news agency’s $628 million in revenues last year.
The important relationship has been a source of some
tension, senior editors say. As part of the contract with
Refinitiv, Reuters is required to meet strict performance
targets for the news coverage that Refinitiv clients receive,
which Reuters has exceeded so far. Thomson Reuters, for its
part, noted in its latest annual report that the exclusive deal,
while lucrative, limits Reuters’ ability to sell to other
customers in the growing financial-services industry. A
Refinitiv spokesman declined to comment.
Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street
Journal, said the new editor will nevertheless have to find new
sources of revenue. “Reuters is in an unusual position because
the pledge from Refinitiv frees Reuters News up to be more
aggressive in creating new news products to serve new markets,”
he said. “I think there’s still a lot of low-hanging fruit for
Reuters because of the strength of the brand and the size of the
staff.”
NEW WEBSITE
Reuters’ primary competitors include Bloomberg News, the
Associated Press, French news agency AFP and visual content
provider Getty Images. In addition to its events business,
Reuters has been seeking other growth opportunities. Prominent
among these is the upcoming launch of a revamped website that is
expected to target professionals and eventually begin charging
for content.
McCabe said convincing consumers to pay for content is
challenging because “Reuters is a brand that a lot of people
recognize but don’t intuitively go to.” But he is more
optimistic that targeting professionals could succeed for
Reuters. “All the evidence says to me that these are the
subscription models that really work,” he said.
CEO Hasker has told colleagues that he wants to make Reuters
more integral to the company’s other divisions. To that end, the
newsroom recently added to its legal reporting staff.
Adler spearheaded a number of moves to modernize Reuters,
which gained fame in its early days for using carrier pigeons to
relay scoops. In the past decade, the newsroom created teams of
investigative, data and graphics journalists, and is using
artificial intelligence to speed the delivery of certain
breaking financial news.
Hasker has said he is eager to continue modernizing the
newsroom by getting it to embrace new technologies more
aggressively. He and Friedenberg considered a wide range of
journalists to succeed Adler, both inside and outside the news
agency, according to people familiar with the matter.
Among them were two top Reuters editors, Gina Chua and Simon
Robinson. The external candidates included David Walmsley,
editor in chief of Canada’s The Globe and Mail, and Kevin
Delaney, former co-chief executive and editor-in-chief of Quartz
Media Inc.
Galloni, based in London, is known internally as a
charismatic presence with a keen interest in business news. She
has told colleagues that her priorities would include boosting
the Reuters digital and events businesses.
She takes the helm after serving as a global managing editor
of Reuters, overseeing journalists in 200 locations around the
world. At the beginning of her career, she worked at the Reuters
Italian-language news service. She received degrees from Harvard
University and the London School of Economics. She returned to
Reuters in 2013 following about 13 years at The Wall Street
Journal, where she specialized in economics and business
coverage as a reporter and editor in London, Paris and Rome.
"For 170 years, Reuters has set the standard for
independent, trusted and global reporting," Galloni said in the
Reuters announcement on her appointment, which takes effect on
April 19. "It is an honor to lead a world-class newsroom full of
talented, dedicated and inspiring journalists."
The hunt for the new Reuters editor came as other major
media are dealing with succession in the newsroom. Both the
Washington Post, where executive editor Marty Baron retired in
February, and the Los Angeles Times, where Norman Pearlstine
stepped down as executive editor in December, are currently
seeking their replacements.
(Reporting by Steve Stecklow in London, and Kenneth Li, Jessica
DiNapoli and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Michael
Williams and Tiffany Wu)