Bulking Up Its U.S. Presence p. 14

By: Mark Fitzgerald Reuters launching state-by-state business report sp.

REUTERS CONTINUED ITS recent bulking up with the announcement at Nexpo 95 that it is launching individual business reports for all 50 states in September.
At a news conference announcing the new service, Reuters State Business News, Paul Eedle, Reuters America Inc. editor America and executive vice president, gave an indirect answer to a questioner who asked if the wire's recent strengthening was an effort to be what United Press International once was ? the biggest alternative to giant Associated Press.
Noting the "breadth and depth of Reuters," Eedle said, "The scene has certainly changed since the, uh, shrinking of UPI . . . . Let's put it this way: Nobody's got a monopoly on serving the news market in a huge democracy like America."
Reuters is now in newspapers that account for 40% of U.S. daily newspaper circulation, Eedle said.
Reuters State Business News will be launched as part of Reuters Business Report and will provide coverage of more than 6,000 companies located in all 50 states, the wire service said.
Existing Business Report clients will get home state business news coverage free of charge, with the opportunity to select reports from other states at what Reuters terms a "modest, incremental fee."
"Reuters State Business News will give our clients a tremendous reporting advantage by providing essential state news based on the same timely and insightful information used by financial industry professional," Eedle said. "It further strengthens the position of Reuters Business Report as a key source of news for local business pages and local broadcasts-bringing significantly heightened focus on state news to our already comprehensive national and international coverage."
Reuters has 21 bureaus in the United States and another six bureaus in Canada, with the most recent additions being Palo Alto, Calif., and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Eedle hinted that new bureaus may soon follow.
"We're doing budgeting now. We have a couple of things in mind," he said.
Soon after Nexpo, the Chicago Sun-Times announced that it had agreed to become the beta site for testing the new Reuters state business report.
"This is one more way for us to give our readers exclusive, local business news that no other Chicago paper has," Sun-Times editor and executive vice president Dennis A. Britton said.
After the formal launching, expected in September, any newspaper will be able to subscribe to the report, Reuters America said.
On the broadcast side, Reuters also announced that, as of July 3, it had combined local business and financial news from its bureaus with coverage from State News Service, the independent wire offering state-specific coverage of federal legislative and regulatory developments. Those reports are available on ABC NewsWire, a 24-hour news service that feeds reports to affiliated radio stations.
Reuters America and ABC Radio Networks, on June 26, agreed to a five-year extension of their news arrangement.
"After doubling its customer base in the last year, ABC will now target several thousand more radio stations in need of a comprehensive broadcast wire service," the companies said in a joint statement.