Interesting this: Thomson Financial, the Canadian financial info giant, is putting the finishing touches to a global news service it will start selling to clients in May, part of a move to compete more extensively with rivals Bloomberg and Reuters, reports FT. This follows is $20 million buy of AFX News from European news service AFP last year.
Since then Thomson has invested heavily in editorial staff, and employs about 500 reporters, around double the number a year ago...The service will provide about 10,000 stories per day, mostly targeted at financial professionals. General news will be provided by AP news feeds, although users will be able to incorporate news available on the internet alongside Thomson feeds.
The plan is to have about a third of the stories automatically generated by computers from standardised earnings releases (would love to read those), a third of the stories will come from news partnerships such as with local language news services and the rest will come from Thomson’s own network of reporters.
Related:
-- Thomson Financial to Buy AFX News For Reported Price of $20 Million
-- New Global Newswire Threatens Reuters?
-- Thomson and MarketWatch.com Partner on News Service; Reuters Not Happy