Reuters recent investment of USD $7 million in blog syndication service Pluck is already bearing fruit, with the launch of “related postings” from blogs appearing alongside (actually at the bottom of) Reuters own Health, Technology and Entertainment content. Dean Wright, managing editor for consumer services at Reuters, explains the reasoning behind this move:
“This is one response to feedback that you wanted more content in some areas and, in particular, to see more comment and opinion. Limitations on what Reuters journalists can write, which are designed to maintain our record for objective reporting, mean we can analyze news but can’t offer any comment ourselves. So our related blog postings are designed to bring you an edited selection of views from bloggers that we believe will enrich our site.”
Just in case you missed it, I want to highlight the key point made by Wright: Reuters has to maintain it’s record for objective reporting which means they “can analyze news but can’t offer any comment ourselves”. Sounds pretty similar to what I said in a post here the other day, where I argued that news and media organisations should engage with blogs as a source of Contacts, Content and Context. Opinion is increasingly what audiences are looking for and it’s important that news and media organisations address this by linking out to those opinions.