Ien Cheng, publisher and managing editor of FT.com, has a vision for the digital incarnation of the Financial Times. In his world, publishers need to remodel themselves on technology companies, working more quickly and more responsively to keep up with the webby world.
Cheng's strategy is three-pronged: improving the development of new editorial products, refining the subscription model and changing the way the business works internally. Looking at the FT.com traffic figures for March, due out this week from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, something in that strategy is clearly working: the site had 7.1 million unique users last month - a rise of 33% year-on-year - and page views were up 72% over the same period to 72m.
Some of the changes to the site are technical, says Cheng, like making the site run faster and appointing a new chief technology officer. Editorially, changes include a significant push into video coverage - the site now produces 150 reports a month and last month exceeded 1m video views. Even FT editor Lionel Barber has had a go, interviewing Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev.
The Wall Street Journal
So how is the FT preparing to face up with competition from its arch-rival - and now Rupert Murdoch-owned - Wall Street Journal? Murdoch has said his goal is to expand the WSJ into general news, which pitches it more against the New York Times than the FT. And while the WSJ will probably stick to its paid-access website, FT rolled out a half-way house in October last year, offering free access for up to 30 stories each month with a premium service at £99 per year.
Cheng insists that in a new competitive landscape, no one company is the competition any more.
"Any publisher that moves to a more general interest focus in order to achieve mass market or country-specific appeal takes them a little bit further from our strategy. Ours is global, first of all, but we are very clear that our goal is to be an executive briefing on world of global business for the Davos class. It is interesting to observe that [the Wall Street Journal] have obviously explored several different ways of doing online."
The revenue model
An increasingly gloomy economic climate could be mixed tidings for the financial titles; it means increased interest and readership, but they could feel the pinch when advertising starts to fall. "It's fair to say we saw a little bit of slow start in the first few weeks of the year, and that was the same across the industry. Everybody is watching very closely," said Cheng.
Despite that, he reports very strong growth of 40% in the ad side of FT.com and says the mood is "cautiously confident" that the FT.com can continue this growth. Ad sales have been grown, and there's renewed focus on demographically targeted ads, rich with information gathered from registered users. Insights into the job title and industry of users can as much as double the value of ads, he said.
Asked about the split between advertising and subscription revenues, Cheng could not give direct figures but pointed to the growth rate; advertising grew 40% this year and subscriptions 11-12%, illustrating of the weight of those revenues. He said 10-15,000 people are subscribing registering each week and the site had 350,000 already; could they reach 1m within twelve months?
Developing the business
Cheng is cagey about the editorial projects that are underway; while he said video and mobile are a focus this year, individuals products are not as important as remodeling the company to become more agile and to launch products in a more iterative, webby way.
"We need to learn from the web start-up and pure play web company approach that has technology much closer with the business. Publishers can't just thnk it's the it department over the wall that they throw stuff to. You've got to have the right platform, approach, mindset and processes to keep up."
The Google issue
Google, he said, is a symbol of the new, open marketplace. While he concedes that competition is "a good thing" in any industry, Google has exploited that open market where consumers have more choice and advertisers have more channels to reach those consumers.
"Anybody who believes in free market economics shouldn't complain about Google. The open marketplace is the ruthless reality of the internet," he said.
"The fact is we are all exposed to a much higher degree of competition in the past, so we are all exposed to the scrutiny and the discipline of a much more open marketplace. So are you good enough to compete? You can't go blaming Google or anyone else for that."
Stress, and change
On the coal face, though, there has been slightly more concern about the broader changes at the FT. Some staff are said to be frustrated at protracted pay negotiations and complain of extra stresses and workloads brought in through multi-platform working. Cheng won't comment on the discussions with the NUJ but his statements on the direction of the business and the implications for staff are very clear.
"If it was change for change's sake it would be unbearable. When it is part of a strategy, people can not just bear it but be excited about it," he said.
"Change is hard for anyone, and I think it's a historic challenge for traditional publishers now. The challenge for us is to become not just a publisher but a technology company in order to support that publisher."
Cheng is quite candid that not every traditional news brand is going to survive.
"Frankly, they shouldn't all survive. But the ones that provide a sustainable value to users wil not only survive but will be stronger. That will be good for consumers and good for journalism."
