Reuters breaks news on minor but symbolically important move away from state control of economy.

Reuters scored a great exclusive on April 12 with a story on the communist government handing beauty and barber shops over to workers, the latest secretive and cautious move by President Raul Castro to try to breathe some life into the moribund economy. The leasing measure marked the first time that state-run, retail-level establishments have been handed over to employees since they were nationalized in the “Second Revolutionary Offensive” in 1968 (which delivered the final killer blow against the last remnants of the Cuban private sector). The new barber shop/beauty salon initiative was arguably the biggest change to retail commerce in Cuba — along with North Korea the world’s only remaining Soviet-style command economy in which the state controls more than 90 percent of economic activity — since the authorization of self-employed workers in the mid-1990s economic opening. U.S. media, even those that closely follow Cuba, had to follow Reuters lead on this important story.