Categories: OLD Media Moves

FT’s goal: 1 million subscribers, big hires

The Financial Times would like to reach 1 million subscribers and is planning some big editorial hires, report Peter Sterne and Joe Pompeo of Politico.

Sterne and Pompeo write, “The FT was acquired for $1.3 billion last year by Japanese media company Nikkei, which has promised to pursue growth despite what the FT itself has described as ‘daunting trading conditions’ and ‘tough times’ related to the newspaper industry’s advertising slump.
Nikkei is ‘taking a healthy and inspiring long-term view’ with the FT, said CEO John Ridding, addressing the crowd. ‘A good part of that growth will come from the U.S.’

“With its premium readership and a lucrative subscription model underpinning its business, the FT is in a better position than most to weather the storm. But ‘nobody’s immune,’ Editor in Chief Lionel Barber told POLITICO’s Morning Media.

“Barber said one of the FT’s goals is to surpass one million combined digital and print subscribers (they’re currently at around 800,000), and he teased ‘a couple big hires in London’ soon be announced, without naming names.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.