• by Sara Guaglione , August 20, 2019

Reuters is partnering with Stringr, Amper Music and InVideo to provide more productivity tools to publishers that use the Reuters Connect platform.

The 2-year-old subscription platform provides customers with over 15 million pieces of news content, including video, text, pictures and graphics, in 16 languages. It features Reuters multimedia content, as well as content from over 40 other media organizations, including Accuweather, BBC, CCTV, National Geographic, PBS NewsHour and USA Today.

The platform is built on a points-based spending model. 

The new Productivity Suite, launching later this year, helps Reuters Connect’s publisher partners manage their workflow and streamline newsroom functions around digital publishing.

“As our client base has expanded and become more diverse — with global news giants rubbing shoulders with ‘sole-trader’ outfits — the demand for services beyond content, in areas such as planning and productivity, became more and more apparent,” Sue Brooks, managing director of Reuters Product and Agency, wrote in a post introducing the Productivity Suite.

The suite gives its partners the ability to plan, edit and produce content with a range of tools. 

Publishers can find and book freelancers, create AI-generated soundtracks and music and create and edit video with Stringr, Amper Muisc and InVideo.

Stringr is a video marketplace that offers custom footage from videographers. Amper Music provides AI-generated, rights-cleared soundtracks and music, and InVideo is an online video editing tool.

Now, a news producer can log into Reuters Connect, find raw video from Reuters of an event or find a stringer to cover it, edit the footage and add custom music to have a packaged video ready to be published, according to a Reuters spokesperson.

The Productivity Suite was created “in response to feedback from our customers, who have said they want simple, easy-to-use production tools and content in one place," Brooks stated.

The idea is an “end-to-end” experience with tools from the planning to post-production stages will help newsrooms deliver better content and boost productivity, she said.

Brooks believes the suite will be especially useful for “smaller users who don’t already have access to these resources,” she wrote in the memo.

More Productivity Suite partners will be announced later in the year.