Reuters’ website goes behind pay wall in new strategy

Reuters News (TRI.TO) on Thursday unveiled a new subscription website as part of a broad initiative to professional business people.

In addition to its current global readership, the newly revamped Reuters.com hopes to attract professional audiences who are willing to pay $ 34.99 a month for a deeper level of coverage and industry-wide information covering legal, sustainable business, healthcare and cars include.

Reuters.com will remain free for a preview period, but will require users to register after five stories. It is not immediately clear when it will start charging.

The Thomson Reuters news division is now joining an overcrowded market of major news organizations already charging for their content.

Among them, financial rival Bloomberg.com counts $ 34.99 a month before discounts, while the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to launch a paywall in 1996, costs $ 38.99.

In an email statement, Josh London, chief marketing officer, Reuters and head of Reuters Professional, called the launch “the biggest digital transformation at Reuters in a decade.”

He added: “Professionals need direct access to industry knowledge, data and insights from expert sources, and Reuters is happy to offer us reliable, impartial and accurate news coverage through a premium offering.”

Reuters president Michael Friedenberg and newly appointed editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni said the success of the digital and events business was one of their top priorities.

Reuters generates about half of its revenue from its largest client, financial specialist Refinitiv.

Refinitiv was part of Thomson Reuters until 2018 when a majority stake was bought by private equity firm Blackstone Group LP in a deal valued at about $ 20 billion. It was then sold to London Stock Exchange Group Plc in a $ 27 billion share deal closed this year.

Reuters also licenses text, video, photos, data and graphics to media companies, which in many cases offer the content free of charge to consumers as well as technology companies and corporations. And it generates advertising revenue from the site, which attracts approximately 41 million unique visitors monthly.

The digital operation is at the heart of its plan for professionals in court, which also includes live events, newsletters, channels on streaming TV services Roku and Plex and audio through Amazon.com Inc., the company said.

Headquartered in Toronto, Thomson Reuters invested $ 20 million in $ 20 million less than a decade ago to rebuild the site. The plan pulled the plug in 2013 because it was “far removed from commercial viability or strategic success,” former Reuters chief executive Andrew Rashbass said in an internal memo to employees at the time.

A Reuters spokesman declined to comment on the investment.

The new iteration of the digital strategy includes a deeper investment in areas such as legal news, where it added journalists and introduced new products, including daily newsletters. It also offers live Reuters events to subscribers.

Our standards: the principles of the Thomson Reuters Trust.

.Source