News wire Thomson Reuters is to scale down its Chinese-language news site, according to an internal email obtained by HKFP on Tuesday.
“We are reorganizing our Beijing editorial consumer operation to deploy more translation and editing resources to our professional news products from Reuters.cn,” the email from Digital Executive Editor Dan Colarusso said.
“We will keep a small team running the website, which has been unavailable to readers inside China, and will automate a large portion of the site around our core financial coverage. This team will also experiment with various social media platforms to best reach Chinese readers,” the email said… “We [will] continue to pursue revenue opportunities with Chinese marketing clients.”
A Reuters spokesperson confirmed to HKFP that the website team would be restructured. “We remain totally committed to reporting on stories from the country, including on cn.reuters.com,” they added.
Sad to hear Reuters closing https://t.co/idjAiecB1s – been blocked in China since March 2015 https://t.co/BNzUYmJKYm pic.twitter.com/YDjjkekGFk
— GreatFire.org (@GreatFireChina) June 15, 2016
The founding editor of cn.reuters.com, Wang Feng, expressed his sadness about the move on Twitter.
As the founding editor of https://t.co/13TjfDBZj6 in 2007, I can’t describe how sad I am.
— Wang Feng 王丰 (@ulywang) June 15, 2016
In 2013, Bloomberg reportedly scaled back its China news coverage after a series of articles about the wealth of Chinese leaders infuriated Beijing. Bloomberg Chairman Peter T.Grauer said that the company should have focussed on its core business news to avoid jeopardising its sales potential in the mainland.
HKFP has reached out to Reuters for comment.
Additional reporting: Tom Grundy.
