Recently this map, which shows how the picture of the US gets distorted if states are sized according to how much news they generate, attracted my attention.

Originally credited to Science News magazine, it appeared in the blog Strange Maps and then was picked up in Adrian Monck’s journalism blog. It is based on an analysis of 72,000 wire-service news stories from 1994 to 1998 and shows how reporting on the government out of Washington, DC and on events in the northeast of the country dominate the news agenda.

I thought it would be interesting to share how the Reuters News map of the world looks. With 190 bureaus around the world we are hugely global, but the bulk of the news by volume that we put out is indeed about the G8 countries and the key emerging markets.

There are stories everywhere, but the news agenda is always a balance between the push of what journalists think is important and the pull of what you, the readers, want to know about.

Important stories from under-reported countries sometimes take a very long time to get the attention of journalists and then of the public.

It is our job as journalists and editors to make sure that we’re there to cover the news, wherever it may happen. Beyond that, we have a responsibility to ensure stories that deserve attention actually get it.

We do that with good writing; we do that with the quality of our sources; we do that by making the connections that show why something is important.

Let’s work together to make sure the long tail of news really works to illuminate all parts of our world.

There is no question that news is emotional.   

News is about real people, real issues, real money and real lives.

News is about history, and about how history - and different views of history - impact the present.

Readers of news services, including those of Reuters News, have strong views and often emotional views about how we cover stories that either directly affect their lives or their emotions.Every year brings to the headlines stories that have the power to stir bitter feelings.

Our job as journalists is to keep the emotion out of it, to strive for objectivity, to strive to be free from bias, to strive to tell the story as it is.

This year one important story that has polarized readers has been Tibet and the violence there involving Tibetans, ethnic Chinese and the Chinese authorities.

Our job as journalists is not to take sides. Our job is not to say who is right and who is wrong. Our job is to report as quickly, clearly and accurately as possible so that readers can make up their own minds and to let the facts - and the protagonists - speak for themselves.

This is particularly difficult in a story like Tibet were we have been restricted from reporting as freely as we believe is necessary. Our reporting has had to rely on sources, eyewitnesses, official accounts and documentary evidence.

Where we cannot count bodies ourselves, we must report on conflicting accounts of casualties. Where we cannot observe events ourselves, we must evaluate and triangulate eyewitness reports.

Our China bureau is staffed with men and women with expertise in the region who, like all the journalists in Reuters News, subscribe to the Trust Principles that bind all of Thomson Reuters and that ensure we report the news independently, accurately and free from bias.

  REUTERS photo by Stefan Wermuth  

This is Day One of the new Reuters News, a news organization that is part of Thomson Reuters, the company formed when two great leaders of news and information came together.

As Editor-in-Chief, I want to assure you that the Reuters News you will see will maintain its commitment to independent, trustworthy, useful news; news that is free from bias and filled with the insight you need.

That’s the excellence that saw us recently win, among other awards, a Pulitzer Prize for spot photography and a Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for commentary.

Over the next weeks and months, we will combine the best from the old Reuters news and from Thomson Financial news; we’ll be bringing together people and services. Most of the difference will be seen immediately on our desktop products for financial professionals, but over time I’m sure you’ll see new bylines and data on our Reuters Media consumer-facing sites as well.

My commitment is for Reuters News to be the global, insightful and innovative powerhouse you want to serve your news needs in words, pictures and video. There are more than two and a half thousand professional journalists around the world backing up my words with their actions every minute of every day of the year.

David Schlesinger is Editor-in-Chief, Reuters News, Thomson Reuters

Here are some of my musings on the current state of journalism delivered in a speech at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford.

I truly believe in the power of community and community sites, like a Facebook or a MySpace, to transform the way we think about the transmission of information; I believe that sites like Newsvine will challenge the way editors select and prioritize news.

The discussion was pretty intense. Some in the audience took me to task for being too starry-eyed about the role of technology (see this blog for one comment); my role as a “boss” made me suspect to some who felt that innovation was simply a code word for cost-cutting and the decline of quality (I made the speech on the day the BBC Trust was considering how to make its large savings.)

I see innovation/quality/budget as being related but without a natural cause-and-effect relationship. It’s all in how you use any and all of the tools at your disposal. For a news organization, you need to decide how to deploy your people, how to spend your money, how to invest in your technology and how to uphold your standards and maintain your ethics. There’s no “right” answer; there’s no simple formula.

Since we were in a University forum, I have to admit we also spent some time discussing the relationship between Daoism and journalism. Here’s one of my favourite Daoist stories – it’s a parable about the difficulties of reporting accurately and the need for us all to be humble about our ability ever to “know”, let alone explain, the truth. It’s as important now as it was when it was written, in the 4th century BC:

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were strolling along the dam of the Hao River when Chuang Tzu said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!”

Hui Tzu said, “You’re not a fish-how do you know what fish enjoy!”

Chuang Tzu said, “You’re not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”

(Translated by Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, Colombia University Press)

Reuters has a proud history of factual, unbiased news coverage. In our news articles we let the facts speak for themselves; opinions are clearly sourced to the experts whom we interview.

But we have our own experts as well. And I want to let them increasingly have their voice on Reuters services.

It is vitally important to me and to everything we stand for that news and comment are kept separate. It is also vitally important, however, that we use all forms of journalism available to us to communicate with our audience and engage in a vibrant conversation around ideas.

Recently here on Reuters.com youll have had the chance to read our new world affairs columnist Bernd Debusmann or our global finance columnist Jim Saft with their analyses on current events. Both use facts as their base but then use their many years of reporting experience to deliver an argument an argument I hope youll join via email.

If you read Chinese, you can see how our Chinese financial columnist Wei Gu puts her expertise to work on our Chinese-language pages.

And subscribers to our Brazilian Portuguese-language financial service can read Agela Bittencourt as she dissects that countrys economy.

What these columns, and the ones that will join them, have in common is a mixture of facts expertise and a point of view. They wont engage in screeching name-calling or invective; they will be challenging and controversial. Agree or disagree with them as you like, but please read, be stimulated and join in the debate.

Once again, Reuters staff have died covering the war in Iraq.

When is a story worth a life?

The answer, of course, is never.

And yet, six Reuters deaths later, were still in Iraq, still covering the story.

Reuters Ukrainian cameraman Taras Protsyuk was killed in April 2003. Reuters Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana was killed four months later. Reuters Iraqi freelance cameraman Dhia Najim was killed in November 2004. Reuters Iraqi soundman Waleed Khaled was killed in August 2005. And in July 2007, Reuters Iraqi photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and Reuters driver Saeed Chmagh were killed.

All of the victims were visual journalists and the people who work with them. To get the story they must get close to the action.

To a journalist reporting the action is the entire reason we are in the profession. We tell the story. We tell what happened. We put it in context. We show; we describe; we explain.

Some do it in words, and that can be done from the office, which, in a place like Iraq, can be horrifically dangerous too. Some do it in pictures and video, and that must be done from the front. And that means taking a risk.

Imagine a world where no one took the risks.

Imagine a world where wars happened in secrecy.

Imagine a world where heroism, tragedy, death and life never got reported or were only filtered through official versions.

Imagine a world where you, as a citizen of whatever country you are reading this in, just didnt have the information you needed to make up your mind.

There arent many news organizations left in Iraq. The ones that are there take a terrible calculated risk. We at Reuters, like our colleagues at other major organization, struggle endlessly to make the dangerous safer, to understand the risks and to mitigate the risks. The cause of journalist safety is a vital one.

Foreign staff and Iraqi staff together put nationalities aside, put religion aside and put sectarianism aside to bring the story out day after day. They do it because they believe with every cell of their souls that telling the story truthfully and fully is a vital service and a sacred obligation.

They do it because they are journalists.

Our Reuters staff in Iraq exemplifies this creed. Read their stories. View their pictures. Watch their video. And know that they are there because they believe you need to know what is happening.

Taras, Mazen, Dhia, Waleed, Namir and Saeed. We at Reuters salute you. We salute your many colleagues from other news organizations who also have died. We salute your colleagues in the bureau today, who are striving to tell the story.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

A tribute to Namir’s work has been compiled by his colleagues

Usually as Reuters editor, I care about stories that deal with millions and even billions of dollars. Today, Im writing about a gift of $26.

My job takes me around the world, sometimes interviewing world leaders, sometimes seeing key financial moguls, sometimes visiting Reuters journalists as they do their jobs.

Sometimes my job transports me spiritually as well as intellectually when it takes me to extraordinary projects projects that open my eyes to the potential of this world and the amazing things that can be done with hope, with dreams, and with a few dollars.

Im writing this in Nairobi, Kenya, visiting our Africa headquarters and visiting the expert men and women who write the stories, take the pictures and produce our Africa Journal and Africa Daily television programmes.

As part of my visit, they took me to Kibera East Africas largest slum and one of the most densely packed places in the world, a place where more than 700,000 people live in the space of New Yorks Central Park. Its a place where gangland-style execution murders happen, where glue-sniffing beggars approach wild-eyed, where the stench of sewage and the sight of garbage assault you as you enter.Today, the clinic sees 200 people a day, most for free.

When I visited, mothers carrying coughing babies were lined up waiting for a visit or for medicine: its winter in Kenya now and in the altitude of Nairobi it gets bitter cold. The clinic treats large numbers of people for malaria, typhoid and the complications of HIV/AIDS.

And it all started with that gift of $26. Tabitha used that money to start selling vegetables, ploughing the profits back into a savings plan with other women, finally starting a clinic.

Bigger gifts from foundations including the Reuters Foundation — and other donors followed. The clinic is currently doing a major project with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention. And it is building a new, modern building in the heart of the slum that will bring undreamed of possibilities of treatment to people who need it desperately.

Barcott, whose gift started it all, entered the U.S. Marines after graduating from the University of North Carolina and served in Iraq as an officer.

He founded and heads the charity Carolina for Kibera, a name that echoes both his ties to North Carolina and his feeling for Nairobis slum, where the charity not only supports the clinic but runs a sports programme for 5,000 children, a womens safe space, and a waste management and recycling programme that mobilizes local youth groups.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

Photos: REUTERS/Antony Njuguna

Sitting next to British Prime Minister Tony Blair as he attacked the feral beast nature of the media in a speech at Reuters headquarters on Tuesday, I had mixed emotions.

I knew it was a great story a politician who has been a master of managing press relations criticising the institution that has been a key player in his rule but I also felt uncomfortable, weighing up the points he made.

The lines have been blurring in the media between fact and comment and between public lives and private lives. Sometimes those lines blur for the right reasons: questions of character definitely reflect on fitness to rule; facts without context are useless. But sometimes the media crosses over and politicians and the public are right to call us on it.

I love my profession, and am usually hugely proud of it: when we expose a story that otherwise would remain hidden; when we exhibit huge bravery covering war or disaster; when we bring expertise to explaining an important but complex issue.

I sometimes wince at what my profession gets up to, however: when we fall slave to the cult of personality journalism, when we pander to the lowest common denominator of taste, when we are voyeurs instead of guides, when we just plain miss the story.

Ultimately, though, I think the answer does not lie in regulation or legal structures to try to paint lines brighter

Within an organization like Reuters, I think our tradition of unbiased fact-based reporting serves us well. When we push the boundaries, when we experiment with new forms, when we move our journalism up the chain of value to make it ever more useful to our customers, the key is to label clearly what is fact and was is not, to be crystal clear about the source of our facts, and to hold true to the best traditions of our craft.

The final arbiters remain our readers, our clients and our customers thats true of any media organization.

I have the greatest faith in the marketplace of ideas. That marketplace will create the winners and losers.

Sometimes, of course, pure entertainment will win the show of point/counterpoint and the sniggering, prying exposure of celebrity satisfies some human need.

But if you believe, as I do, that real, honest, insightful reporting truly powers the decisions of this world and is necessary for the working of business, government and life then ultimately that kind of reporting, properly done and presented, will win and be given its proper value.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

That’s a distinct possibility for me after chairing a discussion on communities and journalism at the World Editors Forum in Cape Town on Tuesday.

I use blogs and social networking sites like Facebook - but I’m 47 so I’m hardly the future.

The point of the session was to get people thinking about what really lies ahead for journalism in the generation after me - and after that.

It is going to be a new world with much more interacting, communing and socializing between journalists and our audience.

Richard Sambrook, director of Global News at the BBC (and one of my Facebook ‘friends’) is convinced that social media will be central to news organisations in the future.

In particular, in a world of commoditised news, journalists will need to be able to host conversations with their audiences while also playing their traditional roles of newsgathering and providing context and analysis.

Richards most excited about networked journalism the notion that you need to connect with your audience because within it are people who know more about any subject you might cover than your journalists. This holds the promise of driving up standards in journalism.

Rebecca Mackinnon, co-founder of Global Voices an aggregator of blogs from the developing world that is partly sponsored by Reuters thinks that journalists will need to learn how to listen to the public via blogs.

If you spend time in the Egyptian blogosphere reading Egyptian blogs its a bit like spending time in the cafes and living rooms of Cairo finding out what people care about.

Rebecca’s convinced that journalists will find new subjects to cover if they do this.

One glimpse of the future I got was from Didier Pillet, Director of Information at Ouest-France, who believes bloggers are already moving into the heart of news coverage. He speaks for a daily with a circulation of 800,000 that gets something like half its material from so-called village reporters — local bloggers. Reassuringly, he told us that they are not envisaged as substitutes for news journalists.

On a similar theme, Dave Panos, CEO of Pluck (in which Reuters has a stake) pointed out several examples of how U.S. newspaper sites are beginning to find ways of covering new subject areas without using journalists by syndicating content from bloggers.

Let me know your thoughts about how journalists might have to change in this new age of social media. And if you’d like to see an edited video of the session, including a presentation on SecondLife by our very own Adam Pasick, then have a look at the bizcommunity blog.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

Writing about yourself is never easy: that’s true for the best diarists as well as the best reporters.When you are part of the story, it is both extremely difficult and absolutely necessary to keep to absolute standards of objectivity and freedom from bias.Reuters reporters and editors have this special burden now, as anyone following this story can guess.

We have always had rules about reporting on Reuters. They say, in part,

“You must take extreme care to avoid any hint of bias when reporting on the Reuters Group, ensuring that reports are factually based. We need some special rules on reporting Reuters as a company, so we are not seen as talking the companys shares up or down.

• As a rule, we do not produce initiative reporting of Reuters.
• Any story about Reuters must be marked ATTENTION EDITOR and seen by a regional specialist editor or deputy before transmission.
• Always seek comment from a company spokesman. One should always be available in London or New York.
• No story about Reuters may contain a quote from an unnamed source”

Because this story is such an important story in the market and in the media sector, Ive told our editors we should report it aggressively the only thing off bounds to them is trying to get information from Reuters officials unofficially. I have allowed an anti-trust lawyer to be quoted anonymously since it was clear the attorney was not speaking from or for Reuters itself.

Stories about Reuters can be especially complicated to report and edit because many Reuters employees including me hold stock or have stock as a regular part of our compensation.

The normal Reuters rules on avoiding conflict of interest apply and the Reuters Code of Conduct says:

• Before you report on a company in which you or your family has any kind of shareholding or other financial interest you must notify the interest to your manager or bureau chief.
• You must not deal in securities of any company, or in any other investment, about which you have reported in the previous month.
• If you are regarded as a specialist in a particular area of business or industry you must notify your manager or bureau chief of any financial interest you may have in that area or industry.

Additionally, journalists are bound by supplementary rules which say, in part:

No inside dealing
Reuters journalists must not engage in or facilitate inside dealing

Avoid conflict of interest
Reuters journalists must not buy or sell, either directly or through nominees or agents, securities about which they have written recently or about which they intend to write in the near future
To avoid loopholes, no time period is specified. The test is whether the editorial activity might continue to have an impact on the securities

No short-term trading
Reuters journalists must not take part in short-term trading of any kind. To this end, Reuters journalists must hold investments for a minimum period of thirty days (except that investments in Reuters shares acquired or disposed of through the various company schemes in place shall be governed by the rules of those schemes). Should a journalist wish to repurchase an investment he or she has just sold, a minimum period of thirty days must pass first. Any exceptions should be for family hardship reasons only and must be notified to and approved by the regional corporate counsel and regional managing editor.

We are putting this disclaimer at the foot of our stories to make the situation clear to all our readers:

(Reporters and editors involved in the writing and editing of this report may own Reuters securities and are bound by the Reuters Code of Conduct, which restricts dealing in securities in companies a journalist is reporting on.)

Reporting on yourself is never easy. But it is sometimes necessary, and it is possible to do well and ethically.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief