The Financial Times still holds big scoops for print

Patrick Smith of the Press Gazette visited the Financial Times, along with other bloggers and journalists, to get a better understanding of how the business newspaper works, and talked to FT.com editor James Montgomery.

Smith writes, “I asked whether FT.com was the pre-eminent place to break news for FT journalists and whether web-first was the strategy for the paper’s many bureaux around the world. Not always, said Montgomery.

“‘It’s not a black and white issue. In print there is the issue of a print edition coming out somewhere in the world [the FT is printed in 23 countries]. It’s not like we have just one release time in print,’ he says.

“‘In the UK we do sometimes hold things back for print because we don’t want out competitors finding something out, we do pay attention to competition. But, sometimes it pays to break a story online.’

“In any case, even the biggest scoops, of which the FT has had many in recent months, find their way online by the early morning as the newspaper begins to hit the streets.”

Read more here.