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Jinfo Blog

22nd May 2010

By Tim Buckley Owen

Item

It’s hard not to detect a note of triumphalism in the Financial Times’s announcement of its new Average Daily Global Audience measurement tool. Combining syndicated readership surveys with unique user and browser data, the FT’s own readership research and Audit Bureau of Circulation figures, it claims to do away with the traditional approach whereby online and print were treated as separate silos – and its first results happen to show comfortably positive growth in its readership over the past year (http://digbig.com/5bbqec). But as News Corporation prepares to take its online titles behind the paywall – and discreetly drops publication of online user numbers for The Times and the more popular Sun (see Penny Crossland’s take on this at http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28882) – is the FT actually unique in being able to make the transition from a free to a fully paid-for online model relatively painlessly? Not surprisingly, News Corp’s James Murdoch thinks not. Speaking recently to paidContent:UK, he acknowledged that customer numbers would go down on day one, but added that you had to build up and that that would take time (http://digbig.com/5bbqed). But the Times et al are general news providers; surely it should be easier for niche operators, of which the FT arguably represents the pinnacle, to charge their clients directly? Actually that’s by no means certain. Commenting on Axel Springer’s recent decision to dispose of its holdings in the business news site WallStreet:Online to its management (http://digbig.com/5bbqee), paidContent:UK suggested that sites targeting financial professionals should be more easily switched from ad support to paid. But, as it reports, WallStreet:Online actually saw a more than 30% decline in income last year (http://digbig.com/5bbqef) – and when another niche trade source, Mobile Industry Review, tried its own subscription-based offering, it had no takers at all (http://digbig.com/5bbqeg). So does the FT’s model hold lessons from which other specialist publications can learn? Outsell’s Ken Doctor believes it does, and sets them out in a report, Five Things to Learn from FT.com (purchase details at http://digbig.com/5bbqeh). Meanwhile closer to home for information professionals, the respected Information World Review (http://www.iwr.co.uk) has just moved from print-on-paper to subscription-based online only – a development that should bring home just how much business-to-business intelligence matters. A steady stream of filtered, well-informed reporting and comment is an essential tool for any information professional, both for their own continuing professional development and for whatever industry they serve in the course of their work. In their own best interests, infopros cannot afford to see business-to-business publications compromised, and need to be discussing constructive options with the titles on which they rely. Otherwise the risk, in James Murdoch’s words, is that we have only news produced by ‘the wealthy, the amateur or the government’. Full disclosure: Tim Buckley Owen has written regularly for Information World Review.

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