Graphics 101
A quick intro to our team and what makes it unique among other graphics teams.
What do we make?
Stories that are best told by breaking the text article template. These could include illustrations, static or interactive graphs and charts, scrolly-telling experiences, maps, multimedia and more. We make anything from more ‘traditional’ charts that convey important data in a clear and accessible way, to completely out of the box ways of telling visually driven stories.
Who do we make it for?
Like most graphics teams, we publish for a general interest audience, especially reuters.com readers.
Unlike most teams, we also publish graphics that are used by other news orgs – embedded or customised to appear on their sites – and therefore, also publish for their readers.
We also serve some readers with more specialised interests, for example, markets professions reading our work on Eikon.
We publish for an international audience. We predominently write in English, but we’re translating more and more of our work for a global audience.
Which audience do we value most?
Even though we serve some special interest audiences, we strive to create impartial stories for a broad audience.
In most cases, we think first about reuters.com readers and our media clients’ audiences.
Geographically, we focus on stories that also have a broad reach, even with pieces that have a more regional focus.
The best way to get a sense of our news judgment is to check out the graphics on our homepage: https://graphics.reuters.com.
Where do we publish?
Graphics are published through the Graphics Server (RNGS), which in turn distributes them to:
- Our consumer news site — https://reuters.com/ — a.k.a., dot com.
- Our graphics site — https://graphics.reuters.com
- Reuters Connect — https://www.reutersconnect.com/ — a B2B service for media companies who can buy our graphics as embeddables or customisable files.
- Refinitiv Eikon — https://eikon.thomsonreuters.com/ — a platform for financial markets professionals, which also has a news stream including all of our stories.
What do we publish?
We make fully bespoke graphics pages, like the ones on graphics.reuters.com (both single page and multipage newsapps), as well as graphics that can be embedded within a story.
We also make flat graphics, which we publish as images and editable EPS or PDF files.
We also publish data directly and release some of our software as open source.
What tools do we use?
See the tech stack overview.
How is the team organised?
We have 3 desks:
- EMEA - Europe, Middle East and Africa (HQ London)
- AMERS - North, Central and South America (HQ New York)
- APAC - Asia Pacific (HQ Singapore)
Not everyone works and lives in the city where their desk is headquartered, and some are fully remote.
Each desk has a Regional Editor, but multiple editors could be working with multiple regions at any given time. The desks have visibility of each other’s work and collaboration between regions happens regularly.
Outside our regional news teams, we also have a team, headquartered in New York, that focuses on special reports and investigations.
Matt Weber is our global head, and Simon Scarr is the deputy head of graphics.
How do we work with the rest of the newsroom?
Our newsroom is our best resource for story ideas and provides critical support for our own reporting.
We co-byline stories regularly with the data, investigative, and special reports teams, as well as reporters covering beats from markets to environment to politcs and more. Our photo and video staff are some of the best in the world and provide us with a rich source of visuals for our pages.
Story ideas can come from us, from the newsroom or, better yet, through collaboration.