There's a good Economic Times (India) interview with Thomas Glocer, CEO Reuters Group that has just come up. I'm impressed by a couple of points he makes, even though I've mostly heard them before. Firstly, the technology really doesn't matter. Reuters has in its history used pigeons and rowboats in the transmission of information, now they use the internet. They're more concerned with how the technology can be used to serve the task at hand, and not the other way round. Secondly, from a branding perspective, Glocer is keeping Reuter's eye totally fixed on the ball that he knows how to hit (serious news and financial information - but within this space, he's reaching out and creating sensible strategic alliances - this the Times of India tie up for Reuters TV in India. Thirdly, he seems to understand that it always has, and it always will be, all about building communities. Whether its the news business or financial transaction business, he gets it. I find Glocer's embrace of bloggers a particularly noteworthy, and shrewd move, and he's now thinking of ways in which Reuters as an organization can build a relationship with bloggers.

Often people ask, "Isn't blogging totally revolutionary?" I think journalists have known for years the idea of a stringer - he's on staff but maybe in a distant location. ET, for instance, uses somebody who's not on the payroll but you have a relationship with. In some ways you can think of bloggers as super-stringers - stringers with a loser connection. But it's up to you to build a community around them and to pull them in.

Read the full interview here.