6 ms·

The FT's chief executive on AI, "loyalist" readers, and its U.S. expansion

34 points by jyunwai 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago
There are a handful of global news brands with readers that are willing/able to pay significant subscription fees for. FT is one of them but US readers mostly consider them the European WSJ and subscribe to the WSJ if they are willing to pay for that sort of thing. I'm not sure the FT makes sense for US readers on a budget. Personally I do the NYT and Economist so it's not like I don't pay for news and commentary but that's probably about my limit.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  > I'm not sure the FT makes sense for US readers on a budget. As you note, they're inherently an upmarket brand like the WSJ not a blue collar read like the NY POST. Readers "on a budget" are probably not an interesting market for their sales-seeking advertisers or any influence-seeking investors or editors. What they probably see is the endless fracturing of American media among its deep political fault lines and opportunity to position as a WSJ competitor with a more transatlantic and global angle on topics of US interest.
- readyman 3y ago
  I split an FT subscription with a circle of Marxist friends. We couldn't care less about WSJ.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  I’m about as left wing as they come. I would never pay for the WSJ because their standard reporting is so insanely biased toward American right wing politics as to rarely be of any specific value, relative to other sources. I do, however, pay for and read the Financial Times, because it’s the paper businesses rely on then to tell them the unvarnished realities of the world in which they operate, regardless of any political valences.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    You probably have to distinguish the WSJ opinion/editorial pages from the news. There's definitely a conservative bias in editorial. (I know and have known a number of folks who have worked in that area.) But news seems pretty neutral in the context of the area where the paper plays.
    - bugglebeetle 3y ago
      No, it bleeds into their reporting as well. The NYTimes has the same problem, a right wing editorial department that is constantly interfering with and undermining their news coverage. The FT doesn’t have these problems.
      - hhghghd 3y ago
        If you think NYT has a right wing editorial department then you really are left wing as they come. I can only imagine how left wing FT's editorial department is.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        Edit: assuming the parent wasn't changed, I misread it and I'm correcting this comment. Sorry. Re: the NYT's editorial department: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39661650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39661650
        hhghghd 3y ago
        Who are you quoting? Why?
        wolverine876 3y ago
        I think I misread your comment, unless you updated it. I updated mine.
- basisword 3y ago
  While I think it's natural to compare the FT and the WSJ, as someone who reads both regularly, they are not comparable. The FT is much more straight-facts in its reporting whereas the WSJ brings in a lot of bias/opinion from the political side.
- AdamN 3y ago
  WSJ is much cheaper than FT. I pay about 4x as much for FT as WSJ.
- cturner 3y ago
  For anyone interested - I am a long-running subscriber to The Australian and get a free WSJ subscription as a side-effect of that. I have lived outside Australia for nearly twenty years. In that time, tried various papers, but came back to the oz as I find its foreign affairs coverage and international commentary better than anything else, and you get a WSJ subscription also. Its website does have some annoying and long-running quirks - for example they interpret middle-click as a left-click.
bitmasher9 3y ago
Who is FT for, compared to other premium news outlets in the United States? In the recent years I’ve been shopping around a news subscription, trying to avoid clickbait and thought bubbles. I don’t think I understand their target audience, even after reading the entire interview.
- jxf 3y ago
  It's basically WSJ with a somewhat more global perspective, and Euro-centric instead of US-centric.
  - Andrex 3y ago
    In my anecdotal experience, they're usually the first to scoop big Japanese business stories. (Some kind of Nikkei -> FT pipeline?) Edit- > It’s been owned by the Japanese company Nikkei, Inc. — an employee-owned company that publishes The Nikkei newspaper — since 2015. Okay that makes sense now, haha. Nikkei is employee-owned?! I need to look into this more!
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      > Nikkei is employee-owned?! I need to look into this more! It's a Kabushiki gaisha (株式会社). They aren't "employee-owned" in the progressive western sense (that's actually a "Cooperative") - it's just a joint stock company similar to McKinsey where employees can partake in limited profit sharing.
      - Andrex 3y ago
        I'd love to adopt that myself, wonder if there's any good reading in English beyond the Wikipedia article...
  - walthamstow 3y ago
    And much softer, more centrist politics. WSJ is every bit a Murdoch paper
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pavlov 3y ago
I’m a long-time FT reader. It’s certainly a finance paper at heart, which means a certain cold calculus in its outlook of the world. But unlike, say, Bloomberg, it also writes about culture and food and pop music, interviews artists, takes books seriously, even has a lively fashion section. So for Americans, maybe it’s like Bloomberg via the New Yorker set in London (making regular trips to the continent). I have to say, the FT has a bizarre blind spot that it shares with almost all other UK media: trans rights. They write about trans people with tones and assumptions that remind of how gays were treated in media in the 1970s. Recently the FT interviewed Judith Butler, and wasted a lot of time (hers and the readers’) on nonsense like “aren’t trans women rapists”. But at least they made the effort to interview someone like Judith Butler, who is outside of the comfort zone of their readership. The WSJ wouldn’t do that.
- goodmunky 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Yes, that’s exactly the argument made against gay rights in the 1970s: that people are gay by choice or because of a mental disorder, and that they’re actively corrupting and seducing young people, so they must not be allowed to be represented in public. This was a very popular argument! See e.g. Anita Bryant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant The harm done by her campaign wasn’t just words and delayed rights for gays. Some violent gaybashers sent people to intensive care shouting “Here’s one for Anita!” This is still the everyday reality for many trans people in America and the UK. Normalized hate touches every aspect of your life. It doesn’t have to be like this.
    - goodmunky 3y ago
      The two are not the same. One promotes radical chemical and surgical intervention in the face of ever increasing evidence that it actually makes lives worse. The other promotes acceptance and belief that you are fine the way you are.
booleandilemma 3y ago
I tried FT and wanted to like it, but I felt it was a little too heavy on the doom and gloom.
keiferski 3y ago
Reposting a comment I made about a month ago about the FT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39177792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39177792 --- Late last year, I signed up for a daily delivery of a physical copy of The Financial Times. I rarely read news websites, other than HN and Reddit. Why? Because I wanted to be informed about world events but dislike the always-on nature of online news, and because I have a certain romantic ideal of reading the morning newspaper with a cup of coffee. Unfortunately it doesn't arrive in the morning and usually comes around noon. How has it been? Both good and bad. I do like having a physical paper put in the mailbox, as it's fun to look forward to a "delivery" every day that is more real than just looking at my phone. On the other hand, I find the FT to be worth reading only about every other issue, largely because there simply isn't enough news to report in 24 hours. The opinion and editorial sections make up a decent portion of the paper and largely aren't worth reading. But, every other issue or so, there are a few excellent articles absolutely worth the price of admission. And even then, the quality of the "boring" articles is leaps and bounds above what I used to read in the NYT or the Guardian. I'm not sure if I'll be renewing it later this year, as it does feel like I'm wasting a lot of paper – but only on the days when I don't enjoy the articles. I wish they had a twice weekly edition, which would be the perfect interval IMO. --- Since then, my opinion has only been solidified. I find their opinion takes to be pretty boilerplate predictable and not very thoughtful. I guess I'd only recommend it if you want a robust overview of daily business news. Otherwise, their general news articles are nothing special. But, they are still much less biased than the NYT, which is what I'm most familiar with.
- AdamN 3y ago
  I wonder what your review of the WSJ would be :-) It's sad to think how many people respect their editorial board articles - so low rent.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    I honestly haven't read much of the WSJ, but from the little I have, it seems less professional and more opinionated than the FT. Both are better than the NYT though IMO.
gnicholas 3y ago
Looks like this business model is serving them quite well, compared to competitors. I work with news organizations and we have seen all kinds (for-profit, non-profit) taking a big hit in the last year. We did pilots with companies that had no concern about paying post-pilot, but then times got tight and they did layoffs. Pretty much everyone is just hunkering down right now. It's really surprising they're cutting so much, given that it's election season, when people are more likely to spend time reading the news.

34 points by jyunwai 3y ago

There are a handful of global news brands with readers that are willing/able to pay significant subscription fees for. FT is one of them but US readers mostly consider them the European WSJ and subscribe to the WSJ if they are willing to pay for that sort of thing. I'm not sure the FT makes sense for US readers on a budget. Personally I do the NYT and Economist so it's not like I don't pay for news and commentary but that's probably about my limit.

swatcoder 3y ago
> I'm not sure the FT makes sense for US readers on a budget. As you note, they're inherently an upmarket brand like the WSJ not a blue collar read like the NY POST. Readers "on a budget" are probably not an interesting market for their sales-seeking advertisers or any influence-seeking investors or editors. What they probably see is the endless fracturing of American media among its deep political fault lines and opportunity to position as a WSJ competitor with a more transatlantic and global angle on topics of US interest.
readyman 3y ago
I split an FT subscription with a circle of Marxist friends. We couldn't care less about WSJ.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
I’m about as left wing as they come. I would never pay for the WSJ because their standard reporting is so insanely biased toward American right wing politics as to rarely be of any specific value, relative to other sources. I do, however, pay for and read the Financial Times, because it’s the paper businesses rely on then to tell them the unvarnished realities of the world in which they operate, regardless of any political valences.
- ghaff 3y ago
  You probably have to distinguish the WSJ opinion/editorial pages from the news. There's definitely a conservative bias in editorial. (I know and have known a number of folks who have worked in that area.) But news seems pretty neutral in the context of the area where the paper plays.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    No, it bleeds into their reporting as well. The NYTimes has the same problem, a right wing editorial department that is constantly interfering with and undermining their news coverage. The FT doesn’t have these problems.
    - hhghghd 3y ago
      If you think NYT has a right wing editorial department then you really are left wing as they come. I can only imagine how left wing FT's editorial department is.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        Edit: assuming the parent wasn't changed, I misread it and I'm correcting this comment. Sorry. Re: the NYT's editorial department: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39661650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39661650
        hhghghd 3y ago
        Who are you quoting? Why?
        wolverine876 3y ago
        I think I misread your comment, unless you updated it. I updated mine.
basisword 3y ago
While I think it's natural to compare the FT and the WSJ, as someone who reads both regularly, they are not comparable. The FT is much more straight-facts in its reporting whereas the WSJ brings in a lot of bias/opinion from the political side.
AdamN 3y ago
WSJ is much cheaper than FT. I pay about 4x as much for FT as WSJ.
cturner 3y ago
For anyone interested - I am a long-running subscriber to The Australian and get a free WSJ subscription as a side-effect of that. I have lived outside Australia for nearly twenty years. In that time, tried various papers, but came back to the oz as I find its foreign affairs coverage and international commentary better than anything else, and you get a WSJ subscription also. Its website does have some annoying and long-running quirks - for example they interpret middle-click as a left-click.

bitmasher9 3y ago

Who is FT for, compared to other premium news outlets in the United States? In the recent years I’ve been shopping around a news subscription, trying to avoid clickbait and thought bubbles. I don’t think I understand their target audience, even after reading the entire interview.

jxf 3y ago
It's basically WSJ with a somewhat more global perspective, and Euro-centric instead of US-centric.
- Andrex 3y ago
  In my anecdotal experience, they're usually the first to scoop big Japanese business stories. (Some kind of Nikkei -> FT pipeline?) Edit- > It’s been owned by the Japanese company Nikkei, Inc. — an employee-owned company that publishes The Nikkei newspaper — since 2015. Okay that makes sense now, haha. Nikkei is employee-owned?! I need to look into this more!
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > Nikkei is employee-owned?! I need to look into this more! It's a Kabushiki gaisha (株式会社). They aren't "employee-owned" in the progressive western sense (that's actually a "Cooperative") - it's just a joint stock company similar to McKinsey where employees can partake in limited profit sharing.
    - Andrex 3y ago
      I'd love to adopt that myself, wonder if there's any good reading in English beyond the Wikipedia article...
- walthamstow 3y ago
  And much softer, more centrist politics. WSJ is every bit a Murdoch paper

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pavlov 3y ago

I’m a long-time FT reader. It’s certainly a finance paper at heart, which means a certain cold calculus in its outlook of the world. But unlike, say, Bloomberg, it also writes about culture and food and pop music, interviews artists, takes books seriously, even has a lively fashion section. So for Americans, maybe it’s like Bloomberg via the New Yorker set in London (making regular trips to the continent). I have to say, the FT has a bizarre blind spot that it shares with almost all other UK media: trans rights. They write about trans people with tones and assumptions that remind of how gays were treated in media in the 1970s. Recently the FT interviewed Judith Butler, and wasted a lot of time (hers and the readers’) on nonsense like “aren’t trans women rapists”. But at least they made the effort to interview someone like Judith Butler, who is outside of the comfort zone of their readership. The WSJ wouldn’t do that.

goodmunky 3y ago
[flagged]
- pavlov 3y ago
  Yes, that’s exactly the argument made against gay rights in the 1970s: that people are gay by choice or because of a mental disorder, and that they’re actively corrupting and seducing young people, so they must not be allowed to be represented in public. This was a very popular argument! See e.g. Anita Bryant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant The harm done by her campaign wasn’t just words and delayed rights for gays. Some violent gaybashers sent people to intensive care shouting “Here’s one for Anita!” This is still the everyday reality for many trans people in America and the UK. Normalized hate touches every aspect of your life. It doesn’t have to be like this.
  - goodmunky 3y ago
    The two are not the same. One promotes radical chemical and surgical intervention in the face of ever increasing evidence that it actually makes lives worse. The other promotes acceptance and belief that you are fine the way you are.

booleandilemma 3y ago

I tried FT and wanted to like it, but I felt it was a little too heavy on the doom and gloom.

keiferski 3y ago

Reposting a comment I made about a month ago about the FT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39177792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39177792 --- Late last year, I signed up for a daily delivery of a physical copy of The Financial Times. I rarely read news websites, other than HN and Reddit. Why? Because I wanted to be informed about world events but dislike the always-on nature of online news, and because I have a certain romantic ideal of reading the morning newspaper with a cup of coffee. Unfortunately it doesn't arrive in the morning and usually comes around noon. How has it been? Both good and bad. I do like having a physical paper put in the mailbox, as it's fun to look forward to a "delivery" every day that is more real than just looking at my phone. On the other hand, I find the FT to be worth reading only about every other issue, largely because there simply isn't enough news to report in 24 hours. The opinion and editorial sections make up a decent portion of the paper and largely aren't worth reading. But, every other issue or so, there are a few excellent articles absolutely worth the price of admission. And even then, the quality of the "boring" articles is leaps and bounds above what I used to read in the NYT or the Guardian. I'm not sure if I'll be renewing it later this year, as it does feel like I'm wasting a lot of paper – but only on the days when I don't enjoy the articles. I wish they had a twice weekly edition, which would be the perfect interval IMO. --- Since then, my opinion has only been solidified. I find their opinion takes to be pretty boilerplate predictable and not very thoughtful. I guess I'd only recommend it if you want a robust overview of daily business news. Otherwise, their general news articles are nothing special. But, they are still much less biased than the NYT, which is what I'm most familiar with.

AdamN 3y ago
I wonder what your review of the WSJ would be :-) It's sad to think how many people respect their editorial board articles - so low rent.
- keiferski 3y ago
  I honestly haven't read much of the WSJ, but from the little I have, it seems less professional and more opinionated than the FT. Both are better than the NYT though IMO.

gnicholas 3y ago

Looks like this business model is serving them quite well, compared to competitors. I work with news organizations and we have seen all kinds (for-profit, non-profit) taking a big hit in the last year. We did pilots with companies that had no concern about paying post-pilot, but then times got tight and they did layoffs. Pretty much everyone is just hunkering down right now. It's really surprising they're cutting so much, given that it's election season, when people are more likely to spend time reading the news.