Platform profile: Reuters Connect offers a ‘one-stop shop’ for global news content

Reuters Connect is a B2B content marketplace for news publishers, featuring all of Reuters multimedia content as well as a diverse array of content from other leading media organisations around the world.

Launched in May 2017, it is designed to be a faster, more intelligent way for Reuters news agency customers to source the content they need via a single destination – a “one stop shop”, according to Reuters.

The digital platform hosts content from 25 news agencies and more than 70 media brands, including BBC News and USA today, and is accessible anywhere with an internet connection.

Since the start of 2020, overall usage of Reuters Connect has grown by 40 per cent as demand has risen during the pandemic. Connect has also run “working from home” webinars for journalists.

The basics

	Reuters Connect
What is it?	‘One stop shop’ for news content
Where is it available?	Anywhere with internet
How much does it cost?	Subscriptions vary
Audience size	1,000s of news organisations globally
Publications on board?	85+ partners
Pros for publishers?	Global news service
Cons for publishers?	Doesn’t cover specialist topics

How it works

All 2,500 Reuters journalists worldwide contribute to Connect in some form, along with thousands more journalists from partner organisations.

All Reuters and partner content – some 30m “assets” (copy, images, video or graphics etc.) both live and archived – are accessed from a single interface. The content is stored in the cloud and is made instantly available for download.

Reuters publishes approximately 8,000 assets a day, doubling when partner assets are included.

Show me the money

Reuters Connect is available via subscription, on which it relies for funding. It features a points-based spending model called Reuters Points, which provides clients with freedom to access and use all of its content across multimedia formats.

“Reuters Points are available in quarterly allocations so clients can optimise their editorial spend in line with the ebb and flow of the news agenda,” said a Reuters’ spokesperson.

The pros

“Reuters Connect gives publishers the power to tell their stories using a single platform: from the latest breaking news to Reuters archive dating back to 1896,” said a spokesperson.

“Reuters Connect offers publishers speed (all their content needs in one place), scale (access to multiple partners and sources) and the flexibility to save money by using points to access what they need and reduce the need for multiple providers.”

A new feature for 2020 is artificial intelligence auto-transcription tools that provide subscribers with access to “near-instant” speech-to-text transcripts across 11 languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi).

The technology was first applied to Reuters’ core video offering and made available across the majority of its real-time video feed. It has since been applied to Reuters’ video archive – nearly 1m videos dating back to 1896.