Seven Million Dollar Reporters—Two Thousand Strong
Bloomberg reports that
Thomson Corp., owner of the Westlaw Legal database and TradeWeb bond-trading network, agreed to buy Reuters Group Plc for 8.7 billion pounds ($17.2 billion) to become the biggest financial news and information company… The acquisition of Reuters, the 156-year-old news organization that has grown to 2,400 journalists…
Through the miracle of division we find this is a value of $7,166,667 or about SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS PER JOURNALIST. This in a company whose CEO Tom Glocer is quoted as saying:
But it is not just bloggers, it is citizen journalists armed with their 1.3 megapixel camera phones… In the news industry, professional and .amateur. content combined creates a better product. It tells the story at a deeper level. Take the tragic Boxing Day tsunami in 2004. For the first 24 hours the best and only photos and video came from tourists.
Now I know these are “only numbers” and maybe the contemporaneous acquisition involving Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal (another “financial news” company like Reuters) is “only a coincidence” and maybe this all happening right when we’re getting news of Iran massively scaling up its uranium processing due also to “only a coincidence”, but it does give one pause, if not cause, to reflect on possible relationships:
The news organization has been accused of showing an anti-Israel and anti-American bias, by sources such as the National Review and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial division… Critics alleged ... problems at the news organization: bias and widespread use of local freelance photographers, which can result in Reuters inadvertantly acting as a “propaganda outlet”.
