David Schlesinger

In his three-year tenure as the head of Reuters America, David Schlesinger has been instrumental in transforming the diverse informational organization into an influential news service recognized not only for its general, global reporting, but its financial coverage as well.

A native of Connecticut, Mr. Schlesinger, 43, has been the executive vice president and editor, Americas, for Reuters since May 2000. Based in New York, he is responsible for the output of more than 650 journalists, cameramen, photographers and deskers in North and South America.

Much of his time and energy have been spent on beefing up the staff not only in terms of pure numbers but also reorganizing so that the service has been able to narrow the focus in certain sectors and increase its depth of coverage, he said.

"I think we've really tried to increase the expertise on the file and emphasize news beats and make a name for ourselves for breaking stories," he said.

Mr. Schlesinger said Reuters, which is the world's largest news and television agency, differentiates itself from other news services by its international and broad approach to news. Rather than focusing strictly on financial news, Reuters covers the gamut.

"We're local everywhere, and that gives us an incredible advantage," he said. "We're exceptionally global."

Mr. Schlesinger, who transferred to New York in 1995 as financial editor for the Americas and also served as managing editor for the Americas, joined Reuters in 1987 in Hong Kong as a correspondent. He then ran Reuters editorial operations in Taiwan, China and the Greater China region in a series of posts between 1989 and 1995.

He began his journalism career as a freelance journalist writing for papers in Hong Kong. A graduate of Oberlin College with a bachelor's degree in East Asian studies, Mr. Schlesinger also holds a master's degree in East Asian regional studies from Harvard.

His four-year stint as China bureau chief was the one job in his journalism career that he really wanted. "Anything after that has really just been gravy," he said.

As editor of Reuters America, his major disappointment has been that the "growth of editorial becomes so dependent on market and financial services."

The company has undergone a couple of rounds of layoffs, and the transition from the dot.com boom to bust has been difficult. "We went from a very giddy period where content was king, and the hangover from that has been quite painful," he said.

As editor, his job is "principally a people job," he said. "It's people, budgets and overall strategy for the news. I tend not to get involved with the day-to-day operation," he said. Instead, his focus is global and regional trends.

He hopes that Reuters continues to be recognized for it expertise in particular regions of the world, including emerging areas like Latin America where he recently boosted its Brazil bureau to 40 people.