If you were to make a list of the most venerable and well-known publications in the world, the Financial Times would be towards the top. Over the course of its existence it has been a watchword for in-depth economic news, and recent endeavours have seen it pivoting more towards analysis and a closer relationship between its print and digital products.
It’s a solid business model, and combined with its unique position in Europe makes its acquisition by Nikkei in July of last year easy to understand. There isn’t another publication quite like the Financial Times, and its 805,000 paying subscribers are testament to that. Speaking at Web Summit earlier this week, its chief product and information officer Cait O’Riordan explained how the publication’s focus on accurate journalism encourages people to move along the funnel from free user to paid subscriber: “We reached a milestone whereby more than half of our revenue comes from digital, which has proved successful for us. “It’s not an easy business but… by concentrating on the way people want to access content has successfully proved the FT… has value in a digital age. The really interesting thing is that when people think about the FT product they think about the journalism. Largely the way people consume news is not in its most basic form, all that different. It is text on a page, whether that is on a computer screen, tablet screen, or newspaper.”