In the present day, I’m speaking with Paul Bascobert, who’s the president of Reuters, the information and data service you might have undoubtedly heard of. That is a part of a particular Thursday sequence we’re working this month to discover how leaders at a few of the world’s largest firms make choices in such a quickly altering atmosphere. , Decoder stuff.
Reuters is a good firm for us to kick off with, as a result of it’s been round principally without end. The corporate was based in 1851, when the new know-how enabling new sorts of media was the telegraph, and your complete idea of a “wire service” was a wild new thought.
Right here, at the moment in 2025, the tech driving media has clearly modified greater than just a bit bit. Distribution in a world filled with iPhones and generative AI is a extremely completely different proposition than distributing media 50 years earlier than the invention of the radio. It’s even a fairly completely different proposition now than it was simply 20 or 30 years in the past, within the internet 1.0 period.
There’s quite a bit there, and also you’ll hear us get deep into principally each Decoder theme there’s. For instance, Paul and I spent loads of time speaking about how a company with a legacy as previous as Reuters’ can maintain discovering an viewers and being profitable within the present age of digital media, which is dominated by social platforms. The viewers isn’t studying newspapers anymore, and I’m not even certain the following era of reports customers will even be visiting web sites. So Reuters is doing loads of work to ensure its work can discover and attain new audiences.
Decoder listeners who’re accustomed to our different episodes with media leaders know I’m very curious how generative AI goes to alter the very enterprise of reports. And the way huge media firms are interested by licensing their content material to AI firms, being in litigation with those self same firms, and even working with them to construct new sorts of merchandise.
Paul had loads of actually fascinating ideas right here, as a result of Reuters basically has at all times had licensed content material preparations, as a result of actually, that’s simply what a wire service is. To Paul, that dovetails neatly right into a approach to consider AI and AI coaching knowledge. I pushed actually onerous to get some onerous numbers out of him, so I believe you’ll actually benefit from the back-and-forth.
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