Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » Financial Times

Newspapers and PCC deny Baroness Buscombe claims

Paul McNally — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:39:39 +0000

Three newspaper publishers have denied a claim by Baroness Buscombe (pictured) that they threatened to quit the organisation because of negative adjudication recently.

Responding to Robert Jay QC at the Leveson inquiry today, who said: “I think a number of editors threatened to leave the PCC”, Buscombe replied: “Yes, the FT, the Guardian, the Mirror.”

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger tweeted:

Buscombe says Guardian theatened to leave PCC because of critical adjudication. Not true #Leveson

— alan rusbridger (@arusbridger) February 7, 2012

The Mirror said:

Mirror statement: “The Mirror has not threatened to leave the PCC in recent years.” #leveson

— Henry Clarke Price (@HenryCP) February 7, 2012

The Financial Times added:

“The FT has never complained to the PCC about adverse adjudications nor threatened to quit the PCC because of rulings against the newspaper”

— Ben Fenton (@benfenton) February 7, 2012

The PCC said: “Baroness Buscombe was giving a personal recollection of her conversations and experiences whilst at the PCC, during her evidence at the Leveson Inquiry this morning. The PCC has not received any formal proposals from these publishers to withdraw from the system in recent years.”Similar Posts:

FT web app has been used 1m times

Sarah Marshall — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:48:00 +0000

The Financial Times is reporting that its web app has clocked up one million hits since it was launched in June.

Around 45 per cent of users have bookmarked the FT web app to a iPhone or iPad, replicating a native app experience by providing an app icon on the device’s home screen.

The app, which is free to download but through which content is limited due to a cross-platform part paywall, saw 150,000 uses in the first 10 days; five months on it has achieved one million clicks on the app.ft.com url.

The web app, built with HTML5 technology, has two advantages for the FT over its previous native iPhone and iPad apps: it avoids the FT paying Apple a 30 per cent cut, the charge for any music, app or book publisher selling through its store, and the FT gets to access and own its audience data.

In a post on its blog the FT said the web app has “significantly boosted mobile and tablet traffic”.

FT.com now sees 20 per cent of total page views and 15 per cent of new B2C subscriptions each week coming directly from mobile and tablet devices. These readers are also more engaged, with FT.com users who register on mobiles and tablets 2.5 times more likely to subscribe, as well as being more active in giving feedback.

The FT has also produced an infographic.

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Web apps v native apps v mobile sites: a guide

Sarah Marshall — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:47:56 +0000

In two year’s time mobile phones will overtake computers as the most popular device for web browsing, John Barnes, managing director of digital and tech at Incisive Media, told delegates at the Mobile Media Strategies day.

Users expect a seamless experience whether they are accessing websites on a Android device, a BlackBerry, iPhone, tablet, laptop or desktop.

It is therefore essential that news sites understand the future of mobile and work out whether to spend money developing a range of native apps: for iPhone, iPad and Android, for example; a web-based app such as the much-discussed web app launched by the Financial Times less than a fortnight ago; spend time building an m.site or opt for a mobile-friendly site.

Bear in mind the following facts:

The smartphone market is 25 per cent of the mobile market in the UK;
The UK is Europe’s leading market for smartphones;
There are 18 million smartphones in the UK. By 2015 there will be 42.9 million;
In 2015 there will be more Android smartphones in Europe than the total number of smartphones in Europe today;
Apple has a 82.5 per cent market share of apps;
Android’s Market will take a increased market share and dominate the market;
BlackBerry will (probably) switch to Android within 18 months, according to Dominic Jacquesson who has written a report on mobile. Indeed the BlackBerry PlayBook, a small tablet, which went on sale this week, can display some Android apps.

And consider your traffic drivers: with social media playing an increasingly important role in directing readers to stories – and with one in every six minutes online spent on social media sites in the US – it is worth noting the use of Facebook is already 40 per cent mobile with 250 million users worldwide, according to Jacquesson. Indeed, Facebook appears to be building an HTML5 web-based app to reach even more people, according to this article posted on TechCrunch.

What is clear from all of the facts is that you need to do something.

“I honestly cannot believe there are still people in publishing who don’t at least have some way of looking at their content on a mobile device that doesn’t mean looking at the full site itself,” said Ilicco Elia, who until last week worked for Reuters, told Journalism.co.uk.

There is no one size fits all, according to Mark Kirby, lead developer for Ribot, an award-winning mobile specialist, so his first piece of advice is do your homework.

If your title is B2B then most of your readers will probably be using a BlackBerry device. If you produce an art magazine, your audience is most likely to be one with iPhones and iPads. Do your research and don’t expect just because your readers have, say, Nokia handsets, that they download apps.

If you already have a mobile site you will be able to work out which devices your readers have by using data from Google Analytics and Webtrends.

“Have a look at your site on all handsets used by your audience, test it out and get those less familiar with your site to see how the experience feels for them,” advises Kirby. “Don’t just spend one minute testing on each device, spend at least 10,” he said.

And that experience and journey is very important. “It’s not about what technology can do, it’s about how technology can make you feel,” Elia said at the conference organised by the Media Briefing.

One you have your data some of the results may surprise you. You may find people are reading lengthy articles on a mobile. Just because people are using a mobile for web browsing, do not assume they are on the move and in a hurry. “Some mobile web-browsing takes place at home, and in a study of users of a mobile app, most were using that at home,” Kirby explained.

Mobile sites

The most important thing to remember is “don’t break the web”, which is something of a mantra for Kirby. Social media is likely to be a big traffic driver for you and a link from Twitter, Facebook or email should send a viewer directly to a story and not to your home page.

Kirby also stresses the importance of ensuring all content is on every version of your site and recommends having a button on the home page and each article page to allow users to flip between sites. Some mobile users may want to see the full desktop view, readers with large screens may want to see the mobile version.

He favours a single column view for mobile and spending time thinking about the user’s journey through your site.

There are two ways of creating a mobile site, Kirby explained. You can either opt for a “responsive website”, which uses the same HTML as your main site and a system of different HTML templates to display different sets of data. “You’re simply using CSS Media Queries to reshape it on various different size screens, mobile being one of those,” he said.

The second option is to use device detection “to serve up a different template, a different HTML, to mobile devices”, he explained.

“There are pros and cons of each,” he said. “The second option is less flexible but the first has more pitfalls.”

Where media analyst Elia is a fan of m.sites, which use a different URL beginning with ‘m.’, Kirby feels they are unnecessary. “I can’t really think of any argument for an m.site,” he said.

For those on a low budget Elia suggests taking a look at Instapaper and Readability and using one of them to format pages and suggests Mippin, which can take RSS feeds from your site and turn them into a mobile site or app.

Web apps

Web apps are hosted on a URL and are either made for a specific device or are hybrid apps made to be viewed on any device. The new FT app is currently available for the iPad and iPhone but built with the Android in mind and indeed based on the FT’s Android app.

“The hybrid is built by using HTML technology and a solution such as Phone Gap to package it. It’s much like a native app and some people wouldn’t realise it wasn’t. And then the code can be reused across multiple platforms: the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and so on,” Kirby explained.

A web app may sound like a perfect solution to a problem in that you pay for the development of one app, rather than two or three, and an in-house developer team may well have the skills to build it. The other big advantage for sites which charge a subscription is that a web-based app bypasses the App Store, so publishers avoid paying Apple a 30 per cent cut for selling their content.

As Elia said: “Most news sites use pretty simple text, pictures and video, so you don’t necessarily tax a device as much as a 3D game would, for example, so a HTML5 web-based app is perfectly acceptable and you will be able to get as much as the wow factor as you need.”

However, readers will need to know that your app exists as they will not find it by searching in the App Store and, unless you are a major player such as the FT so able to generate sufficient buzz to result in 100,000 hits in the first week, you could struggle to get people using it.

The user experience may not be as good as with a native app, although the FT is reporting initial feedback has been good with many users finding the web-based app experience better than the native. If you have an iPad it’s worth testing the FT’s native app against its web-based one.

Kirby said for him (using an iPad 1) the web-based app seemed sluggish. “I have experienced these problems myself when building hybrid apps. It does seem perhaps they’re not there yet but the platforms will improve,” he said.

Native apps

There are two points worth remembering. Firstly “an app should be the answer to a question and not the question itself,” according to Kirby. It needs to be a solution to a problem rather than simply built for the sake of having an app.

Barnes offers a suggestion of how to test your need for one. “Write the press release on the launch of an app before you build it. You’ll often realise it’s a crapp – or a crap app,” he said.

Secondly, there is no need to hurry. “You don’t have to be first when it comes to apps,” Elia said, suggesting it was better to spend more time researching and developing a better app.

And a good app will cost you. Expect to pay a minimum of £20,000 per app as decent developers charge around £1,000 a day and it is likely to be at least two month’s work, Kirby said, and suggested an app is more likely to be in the region of £100,000 to £200,000.

Kirby also pointed out that iPhone, Android and BlackBerry users all have different expectations and expect a certain design. Android readers expect an app that looks like an Android app, iPhone users expect a familiar style, feel and layout too. However, “you need a branded experience across platforms”, Elia said.

The iPad offers “big opportunities for publishers”, Staffan Eckholm, from Bonnier’s Moving Media+ said last week.

But Kirby warns against trying to do too much. For him it is all about user experience – or UI – and he feels GQ’s iPad app is “confusing and stressful”, due to being so complicated it gives instructions on how to use it.

He points those considering a magazine iPad app in the direction of PixMax and to Zinio, an even better option in his opinion, which includes added functionality like links and hyperlinks within the contents pages of its products.

For several publishers initially the number of people using native apps is encouraging. This month the Guardian has reported 400,000 global downloads of its iPhone app, with more than 67,000 paying subscribers; the Economist has reported two million downloads of the iPad and iPhone app with 650,000 regular readers, most of them paying; the Times has not released app stats but in March said it had 79,000 paying digital subscribers; and although the Telegraph has not revealed figures it has said it is “hugely encouraged” by the number of people willing to pay to read news.

So it is worth remembering that it is barely a year since the first iPad hit shops in the UK and that the landscape for news consumption is constantly evolving.

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#mobilemedia11: FT web-based iPad and iPhone app a ‘wake-up call’ to publishers

Sarah Marshall — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:48:22 +0000

The release of the Financial Times’ web-based HTML5 app has provided “a big wake up call” to publishers , said Andrew Grill, keynote speaker at the today’s Mobile Media Strategies day.

Earlier this month the FT released an HTML5-based iPad and iPhone app which circumvents the 30 per cent charges levied on app sales by Apple by allowing users to update content through the FT website and thus allowing the newspaper to take the full revenue.

The Economist is “watching closely” and Tom Standage, digital editor of the title, signalled it may follow suit.

“HTML5 will be the answer to all of our problems; even if it’s not yet,” predicted Ilicco Elia, a mobile product expert, who until yesterday worked for Reuters and is yet to announce where he will be working next.

Elia warned that “you can’t do everything in HTML5″ and said it was a sensible option for the FT to launch in HTML5 compared with an unknown title. “It’s okay of you’re the FT because people know the brand in will go in search of it,” he explained.

Many publishers are now looking at the HTML5 hybrid: not a pure app, not a pure browser experience, said John Barnes, managing director digital strategy and development at Incisive Media, which works with B2B publishers. He explained the dilemma between developing apps when working with very different titles.

Barnes gave the example of two titles he works with: Legal Week, where 10.5 per cent of web visits are mobile, most of them accessing the site via a BlackBerry device. He urged the audience to compare this with Photography magazine which is mostly read on the iPad and iPhone.

During a session on how to make money with mobile media, Paul Lynette, head of mobile advertising at EMEA, Microsoft Advertising, showed the potential for in app ads using HTML5.

Thinking of developing an app, an mobile site or a HTML5 hybrid?

Considering the advantages of mobile editions (m.editions) versus apps versus the HTML5 hybrid, Barnes said the advantage of m.editions is they are browser-based and, therefore, provide full integration with a CMS, have the same domain name, integration with analytics and web trends.

And for news sites without an m.edition Elia gave a word of warning to the delegates of the event: “You should not be here if you don’t have an m.edition, you should be in the office coding.”

He warned there is “not a lot of margin in mobile” but it should be central to any online strategy.

Elia warned of the importance of listening to your audience. “You don’t have to be first when it comes to apps,” he said and suggesting it was better to spend more time developing a better app.

Barnes had a different suggestion to those thinking of creating an app: “Write the press release on the launch of an app before you build it. You’ll often realise it’s a crapp (crap app),” he said.Similar Posts:

Media release: Financial Times launches A-List commentary section

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:09:47 +0000

The Financial Times has announced the launch of a new section called the A-List, claiming to offer commentary from leaders, policy makers and commentators, on FT.com and all global editions of the newspaper, based on issues “at the top of the news agenda”.

Topics will range from business, economics and finance to world politics and diplomacy. The headline commentary will be accompanied by a response from related experts to encourage debate, and readers will be able to participate and comment online.

Financial Times: Clearance on BSkyB bid delayed by at least two weeks

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:39:38 +0000

Clearance on News Corporation‘s bid for the remainder of BSkyB will be delayed by at least two weeks, the Financial Times reported this week, “after a hitch in negotiations between Rupert Murdoch’s media group and UK regulators”.

People familiar with the talks between the two sides said on Monday, that the delay had been caused by the level of detail that Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport required in a merger remedy offered by News Corp.

The remedy was for Sky News to be spun off into a separate company called Newco to address concerns for media plurality.

See the full FT report here (FT.com does operate a registration model).Similar Posts:

Reuters: FT resisting Apple’s efforts to channel subs through App Store

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 16:38:11 +0000

Reuters reports today that the Financial Times is “resisting Apple’s efforts” to channel subscribers through the App Store.

Last month Apple launched a new subscription service which ruled that publishers will still be allowed to sell app subscriptions through their own websites but will also have to offer subscriptions through Apple from within the app for the same price or less. This will then give Apple an opportunity to take away a 30 per cent cut of the subscription charge.

As part of the new service it is understood that customers purchasing a subscription through the App Store will be given the option of providing the publisher with details such as their name and email address when they subscribe, while publishers can also seek additional information from App Store customers “provided those customers are given a clear choice”, a release said at the time.

But in an interview with Reuters, the FT said it wants to continue to sell subscriptions for its digital news directly, rather than “surrender control of new customers”.

Apple’s hit tablet computer, the iPad, has become a major driver of new subscriptions to FT.com, thanks to its large and crisp display, possibilities for interactive features and affluent customer base.

But the FT values direct relations with its customers which allow it to tailor advertising and products to its audience, and is resisting Apple’s efforts to channel them through the App Store.

News publishers across Europe have raised concerns with the new service, such as the loss of 30 per cent of the subscription revenue, which the International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA) said would mean news publishers will not be able to invest in new technology, products and services.Similar Posts:

FT editor criticises Fleet Street for ‘conspiracy of silence’ over phone hacking

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:06:00 +0000

Financial Times editor Lionel Barber accused Fleet Street of being ruled by a ‘conspiracy of silence’ over the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, and said it was because of other newspapers being involved in the so-called “dark arts”.

Barber was giving the Hugh Cudlipp lecture last night at the London College of Communication.

Below is an excerpt from his 5000-word speech, a full version of which can be found here.

The phone-hacking scandal marks a watershed – not just for News International but also for tabloid journalism. True, the practice of phone-hacking was widespread (and not only among the tabloids). The Information Commissioner’s report in 2006 showed that 305 journalists used private investigators. The number may well have been higher. And yet, beyond the conviction of one News of the World journalist and one private investigator, the infamous Glenn Mulcaire, no serious action was taken against them; not by the police, not by the courts, and not by the Press Complaints Commission.

The PCC was supine at best. And while the Metropolitan Police has now re-opened its inquiry, many questions remain about why it did not pursue the original News of the World investigation with sufficient rigour.

Most important of all, the newspaper industry itself did not take the issue seriously or seek to establish the truth. Indeed, aside from the lead taken by the Guardian, which was followed by the FT, BBC and Independent, the rest of the newspaper industry took a pass on the News of the World phone-hacking story – almost certainly because they too were involved in “dark arts”.

Yesterday the Press Complaints Commission announced it was setting up a phone-hacking review committee to draw together the lessons learned as a result of the outcomes of the relevant police inquiries and ongoing legal actions in the phone hacking case.

The Metropolitan police are currently investigating the use of phone hacking by the News of the World after reopening the case earlier this month.Similar Posts:

FT and Bureau of Investigative Journalism on partnering for EU funds investigation

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:53:46 +0000

The Financial Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have shared the details of the “considerable” work behind an eight-month investigation to document the recipients of the European structural fund.

The investigation involved dozens of journalists, researchers and coders being deployed by the FT and the Bureau, according to a report by the paper (requires subscription) on the partnership last night, which resulted in the creation of a database holding more than 600,000 records of projects and beneficiaries.

We downloaded the data, published by national authorities for the first time as part of the current budget round, from more than 100 websites of national and regional bodies. In the process, we examined almost 600 different files in 21 different languages.

The result was a database holding 646,929 records that we are puttting online for our readers to examine.

In its account of the investigation the Financial Times discusses the variation in the accessibility of data from different EU states.

Some EU states are to be commended for how they publish the data, but others have a long way to go. Estonia provides an easy-to use database. Others, such as Bulgaria, provide barely legible documents, and our team had to write a letter to the minister of the economy and make dozens of telephone calls to obtain the data in a useable format.

Meanwhile in its own account the Bureau outlines the steps that had to be taken by those involved.

The effort required to collate all the information was considerable. It involved downloading data from more than 100 websites of national and regional bodies that administer the funds, and captured in nearly 600 different files. This took months to complete.

…We are now, in late 2010, half way through the current spending round, and the database shows how funds have been allocated up to this time. We then went further to find out exactly how the money is being spent on the ground, and this has produced a series of films and news pieces.

Over the next few days the Bureau says, together with a group of international collaborators, it will release a number of stories resulting from the data. The Financial Times will cover the story for five days from today, while Al Jazeera, BBC Radio 4 File-on-Four, BBC World Service and France 2 will also broadcast programmes based on the research.Similar Posts:

FT.com: Dow Jones planning digital overhaul of B2B activities

Rachel McAthy — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:33:33 +0000

Dow Jones is planning a “digital overhaul” of its business to business activities, reports the Financial Times.

In its report (requires registration), the FT quotes Robert Thomson, Dow Jones’ editor in chief as saying that two editors were assigned to a ‘special project’ in September to focus on “new means of delivering industry-specific information to customers traditionally served by the group’s newswires and data products”.

“It’s obvious to even the casual observer that the part of the business that has slipped a little is B2B. It’s fair to say that that’s the concern which most occupies my thinking at the moment,” he said.

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FT Group’s digital subscriptions rise by 50 per cent

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:00:06 +0000

Financial Times publisher Pearson has reported an increase of 11 per cent in overall sales for its newspaper operation for the first nine months of 2010, according to a Press Association report.

The FT Group, which according to a report by the FT makes up 15 per cent of turnover, also saw digital subscriptions to its content rise by 50 per cent in the first nine months of 2010 to more than 180,000.Similar Posts:

Financial Times launches iPad app for Chinese edition

Adam Levitt — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 15:20:27 +0000

The Financial Times has launched its FTChinese.com app for iPad.

The app is compatible with both the wi-fi and 3G iPad models and allows readers to download content to browse offline. It is sponsored by watchmaker Rolex.

The launch follows the FT’s highly successful iPad app, launched in May, which has attracted around 400,000 downloads and generated more than £1 million in advertising revenue. According to global commercial director Ben Hughes, the iPad now accounts for 10 per cent of the paper’s new digital subscriptions.

Oliver Zhang, senior product manager at FTChinese.com said: “The iPad is another exciting platform providing readers with FTChinese.com’s high quality content. Our objective is to allow users to read award-winning content on the move as well as interact further with the website’s dynamic features such as slide shows, videos and interactive quizzes.”Similar Posts:

Nieman: How the FT’s business model is more online retailer than publisher

Laura Oliver — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:14:42 +0000

Fascinating article on Nieman Journalism Lab from Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics, looking at how the Financial Times, its website and its business model take inspiration from internet retail and not publishing.

Internet retailing — think Amazon — seems like a very different business than publishing. In the endlessly measurable digital age, though, the parallels are striking. It’s not in what you are selling – books, electronics, or news stories – it’s what you know about your customers, their habits and wants.

(…) In addition, analytics support the FT’s eight-member strategic sales team as it customises marketing approaches for firms and their agencies. Grimshaw says that by early 2011, advertisers themselves will get some access to FT audience data.

Full post on Nieman Journalism Lab at this link…Similar Posts:

News Corp nearing a decision on ‘tablet-centric’ unit

Rachel McAthy — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:12:42 +0000

According to a report in the Financial Times, News Corporation is “nearing a decision” on plans to start a news organisation which could provide content specifically for tablet device applications.

The plans, which could still be dropped, would mean the creation of a “tablet-centric” subscription product, for devices such as the iPad, with dedicated content produced for that platform.

The ambitious undertaking under consideration would be another test of consumers’ appetite to pay for news. The momentum behind developing a tablet-centric product is driven by a belief that readers are willing to pay for portability. News Corp’s early progress in selling subscriptions on the iPad has inspired the company to consider the new business.

The report adds that if the project goes ahead, it would mean job opportunities for new staff who would have to produce new content on news, entertainment, sports and politics.

See the full report at this link… (note: registration required)Similar Posts:

FT begins search for journalists to staff new online service

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:42:56 +0000

A new online service from the Financial Times is advertising for editors and writers to join them from across the globe.

FT Tilt, which will launch later this year, says on its landing page that it will provide “a similar blend of lively news and analysis for a specialist audience of finance professionals”.

The FT won’t discuss the project publicly just yet, but confirmed they are currently recruiting journalists as well as user interface engineers to work on the new site.

The project is being led by the same team that developed FT Alphaville, the company’s successful financial blog.

See more here…Similar Posts: