Reuters.com relaunches with greater consumer focus

Thomson Reuters has revamped its Reuters.com website to more widely showcase its business and finance coverage – executives also indicated the agency would eventually charge for access to some of its online content.

A year in the planning, the new site launches today with Reuters’ editor-in-chief David Schlesinger saying its modest aim was to be ‘the world’s best website covering business and finance news, analysis, and opinion.”

The new site will highlight ‘dashboards’of data from across the group’s legal, healthcare, tax and accounting and financial divisions.

Following Reuters takeover of Breakingviews, the site will seek to add more analysis and opinion to its breaking news service.

Schlesinger wrote:

This is our redesign, a year in the making. That’s a year of extensive discussions with people like you, our elite audience of business professionals, about what would make the site better and faster and easier to use for you as you drive business activity around the world.

We want this to be the world’s best website covering business and finance news, analysis, and opinion. Full stop.

We want you to be able to come for a quick glance at the top headlines, or a longer deep dive into a topic that’s important to you. We want you to scan the output of the 2,800 men and women or hone in on a favourite writer or photographer.

This site is for you; we want it to be your ticket to a wealth of news, information, and analysis presented in a cutting-edge format, including text, video, pictures, graphics, user interaction, and personalization features (try the new toolbar at the bottom of every page).

According to the FT, the new site could also pave the way for the news agency to follow other media owners like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in charging for some content.

‘I think eventually we will [charge],’Alisa Bowen, head of consumer publishing for Thomson Reuters, told the FT. ‘This is designed to be an ad-supported property, but as we introduce a greater range of content we will be looking for a range of different business models.”