The recent move by Reuters noted by Journalism.com and many others to eliminate its core financial news content available via major Web portals is perhaps not as much of a shot in the foot as it may appear at first. Reuters sees the power of news search engines becoming the new "front page" for online news seekers, which draw eyeballs to the stories - and ad revenues - of the site on which the search engine finds a story. In this "good content is where you find it" world, portals built off of subscription feeds of news are in some ways passe, as aggregation on the fly from wherever relevant content is found is the new value point. So score one for Reuters for sensing this trend and trying to monetize those news search clicks more effectively via a Reuters-controlled context. But at what cost? The gamble in the short term is that revenues from the pure-Reuters home portal will increase enough to counteract the loss of revenues and brand exposure that they enjoy via consumer portals today and tighten up brand exclusivity for professional sales. Unlike AP, which is beholden to its member papers, Reuters need not cater to other outlets to acquire content, and it appears to be taking advantage of that positioning - albeit somewhat late in the online game. This is a long-term positioning move which may pay off sooner than one thinks, given the number of financial professionals who use Reuters news via consumer portals. But it places enormous pressure on Reuters to build up the value of its portal to attract and hold financial news consumers. They're on the right track, but we'll have to see if there's enough steam in the boiler to get them to the next station.