Traffic up 250 percent for Financial Times site due to pandemic

Financial Times website traffic has grown 250 percent year-on-year over the past month as coverage of the coronavirus crisis has broken new records, reports Freddy Mayhew of the Press Gazette.

Mayhew reports, “The FT said the pandemic has resulted in its highest ever levels of consumption and engagement online, smashing previous records set during the EU Referendum.

“However it now has 75 per cent more engaged subscribers than in 2016, with 1.09m paying subscribers at the end of last year (up 11 per cent year-on-year), of which a majority are digital subscriptions.

“The title said it had seen a ten-fold increase in trial subscriptions in the past three weeks.

“A new coronavirus business update email, launched on 11 March, has attracted more than 70,000 subscribers already.”

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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.