RTTNews: Another curious news agency

RTTNews has come up in conversation here before, but I noticed yesterday that Paula Midena, formerly of CEP News (Canadian Economic Press), is now working for this curious Buffalo-based news agency. Midena was the marketing director who either didn’t know or wouldn’t say that Vigilant Futures was the backer of CEP News and who unsuccessfully tried to promote Canadian Economic Press’  through Wikipedia. She’s worked for a variety of forex operations since CEP shut down two years ago and had a number of different titles.

Midena’s arrival at RTTNews comes at an interesting time. Just like CEP News did, it’s been on a hiring blitz and now employs a lot of young inexperienced reporters at its Buffalo, NY (!!???) and Chennai, India operations. Unlike CEP News, it’s loud and proud about the people behind it, Ravi Mariathasan and Andrew Mariathasan. To my eyes, it looks like the company’s gone to quite an effort to create a strong internet presence through LinkedIn and Wikipedia, where it’s also done some Midena-like spinning.

RTTNews came on the scene at about the same time as NTKN, CEP News, etc as its Wayback Machine records show. Its news content is mostly rewritten press releases — with quotes from the occasional media spokesperson thrown in for good measure — and amateur movie reviews with, as far as I can tell, no bylines. Although it says its clients include leading banks, brokerages and hedge funds, it doesn’t name any names.

Late last year, RTTNews signed an agreement with dpa-AFX, an established German news agency that could very well have access to lock-ups the world over, something RTTNews does not appear to have. This partnership with a German organization is also  reminiscent of the NTKN deal with Deutsche Boerse.