The chief executive of the Financial Times, John Ridding, is remarkably upbeat about the future of newspapers which charge for content.
The main reason may be that he can report a 43% year-on-year rise in subscription revenues for FT.com and a 15% increase in digital subscribers, to 126,000. This has helped the FT to be profitable in 2009, he says.
But beyond the raw subscriber numbers – after all, it is frequently pointed out that financial websites are more likely to be able to charge for this sort of information – Ridding highlights the further opportunities created by this subscriber list.
Speaking after the FT's parent company, Pearson, unveiled a 13% profit rise, Ridding focuses on the engagement and advertising benefits that subscriptions bring.
"Advertising alone is not going to sustain scale of newsrooms," he says. But growing a subscription base allows advertisers to know exactly who it is that they are selling to, which increases its value. "If you have an audience that is paying for your journalism they are engaged and that is an important message for advertisers."
"The nature and consumption of journalism [on the web] is different to newspapers," he says. The FT does not have an immediate paywall, but instead allows readers a certain number of clickthroughs before they are asked to register or pay. "People come in for one story. You hope they will become a registered user or a subscriber. They may not all become subscribers."
The FT is now working on a micropayments project and further niche publications.
