Categories: OLD Media Moves

Nikkei to judge success of FT purchase during next decade

Nikkei is not looking for an immediate return from the company’s £844m purchase of the Financial Times and will judge the success of the deal over the next 10 to 20 years, reports Matthew Garrahan of the Financial Times.

Garrahan writes, “In a discussion with John Ridding, chief executive of the FT, and James Harding, director of BBC News, Mr Kita said the two companies would collaborate on digital expansion and third-party content distribution via platforms such as Facebook.

“‘Print media is shrinking dramatically in Japan,’ he said, adding that Nikkei’s revenues from print advertising had halved in the past eight years and lost 300,000 print sales during the same period.

“Nikkei has a print circulation of 2.8m and 480,000 digital subscribers. The FT has a total paid-for readership of 780,000.

“Mr Ridding said three-quarters of the FT’s readership came from digital. ‘The FT has reached a tipping point in its transformation, with revenues from digital now matching print,’ he said.”

Read more here.

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.