FT CEO: Hoping For Lead In The Bleed

(PaidContent.org)  This story was written by Rafat Ali.

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Financial Times CEO John Ridding hopes to build on the gains of the downturn, as its print newsstand sales rose 30 percent in U.S. in September, and about 20 percent in Europe and Asia, and online pageviews are up dramatically...that's sequential over the traditionally slow August, and of course the headlines these days help, like it has been for WSJ as well. He told Robert MacMillan last week that in UK, "We basically couldn't print enough copies and retailers were running out." For online, the number of registered users of FT.com rose to 750,000 now, compared with 30,000 a year ago, though that could be attributed more to its more open online site, relaunched late last year. During the week of Sept. 22, online page views were up 300 percent, and monthly unique visitors were up 250 percent compared with last year. That of course doesn't really mean anything: increased audiences in print and online, with declining advertising means only one thing: increased costs, and after spikes during events, the audience comes back down.

These issues and more will be at the forefront of our Future of Business Media conference on Oct 28th in NYC this month, where James Montgomery, lead editor of FT.com, will be speaking on our breaking news panel.



By Rafat Ali