Tuesday 8 January 2008

7,000 Reuters headlines daily

Going back to my earlier posting on what might be the long term strategy of the wire services, just look at this plug from the International Herald Tribune: 7,000 Reuters headlines daily

The New York Times Media Group, as the like to call themselves, are not even close to being able to generate that much content daily. They go on about how many foreign correspondents they have, but all newspapers, even the likes of FAZ and the WP, have no where near the amount of content generators (journalists) as the wire services.

What is to stop Reuters building a consumer brand awareness online and then selecting, like the IHT does, from those 7,000 headlines. They can still sell content to others, but that might be lots of little fish, and not the MSM, whom they might aim to put out of business, at least online.

All speculation of course. I haven't a clue.

I just sense that Reuters are smarter than the NYT on all this, and I suspect that AP is watching it all with a great deal of interest.

BTW: I will shortly be doing an analysis of www.iht.com to see if they have been told to shift from AP content (their traditional filler) to Reuters.

My bet is yes, if not now, then soon.

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