Reuters first with strike at Chile’s Collahuasi copper mine

Reuters scored a massive beat on Nov. 5 on the strike announcement at Chile’s Collahuasi, the world’s third biggest copper mine. After hermetic union leaders said talks were over and made no mention of whether the strike would go ahead, a Reuters correspondent saw a union tweet on his Blackberry advising the strike was on – which we then reported; Bloomberg matched the alert only hours later, apparently assuming the union would only make the announcement at a previously scheduled meeting. Reuters was then 25 minutes ahead with the actual start of the strike, thanks to clever strategic planning – checking with the union the night before it would consider the strike underway once buses that ferry the miners to work left empty from the camp near the deposit The story helped drive copper prices to a two-year high; traders without Reuters screens would have been wondering what gave the market its extra oomph.