Navel-gazing time now on FT Alphaville.
Rattled by the growth of the online financial commentariat – see expansion plans at the WSJ’s Heard on the Street column, Breaking Views, the FT’s influential Lex column and (cough) this humble blog – Thomson Reuters is launching its own opinion service this summer.
A number of high grade hirings (see John Kemp) have been topped off this week by the poaching of Felix Salmon from Portfolio.com to act as deputy editor under Jonathon Ford, himself a former Lex-ite and co-founder of Breaking Views.
(And we wonder, in this inbred world, why financial media pundits look so funny?)
Financial commentary is tricky for Reuters since its founding editorial principles seek to avoid bias. Hence, when someone like Kemp spills forth his opinions, the reader is first and foremost informed that Kemp’s views are his own.
Hiring Felix, however, promises to take Reuters to a whole new level. As he tells his Portfolio colleague Jeff Bercovici, author of the Mixed Media blog:
I’m going to be the person going, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, blog, it’s great,’ and I’m going to be the person saying, ‘Of course you can do that, and, no, you don’t need me to edit it, and the faster you can put it up the better, and don’t worry about being wrong.
Anyway, all Reuters need now is a name – something that Ford & Co are reportedly struggling to come up with.
Do help them out by posting your suggestions below.