Reuters has made its journalism handbook available online, free for everyone. Surely a very valuable resource for journalists, students, bloggers, writers all over the world. Dean Wright explains the reasoning behind the move in the following quote:

• “Transparency: At a time when trust is an endangered commodity in the financial and media worlds, it’s important that news consumers see the guidelines our journalists follow.
• Service: As we’ve seen over the past decade, the barriers to publishing have dropped so that anyone with an idea and a computer can be a publisher. But it’s also become clear that publishers have a varying standard of truth, fairness and style. Our handbook is a good place for budding journalists to begin.
• Geography: Reuters serves a global audience and the handbook recognises the cultural and political differences that our journalists face in reporting for the world. This is a handbook not just for English-language journalists in the United Kingdom or the United States, but for wherever English is used.”

I found the news at the excellent journalism.co.uk. site, which also tips about one of the good Delicious features: The lists of popular bookmarks, here for the tag “journalism”, where the Reuters handbook currently is no. 1. A good tool.