« As America Votes | Main | Rite of Passage »
February 13, 2008
A Business Model Premised on Frequency of Use
The Financial Times has recently amended its on-line business model to maintain subscription revenue while opening its walled garden to the general conversation on-line. Any reader can get access up to five articles a month for free. After five articles, you must register, enabling you to read another 25 articles for free. After 30 articles, you must be a subscriber to FT.com or to the print edition for $99 or $199 to include mobile news reader. The theory behind the pricing policy, like that of the Wall Street Journal’s digital effort is to preserve a solid subscription base while ramping up advertising, to assure that the high quality journalistic standard is preserved. The registration also tells the FT about their audience for targeted advertising.
According to James Montgomery, who is the editor of the FT.com, the business model was put into place with the particular aim of being “in the blog conversation.” The FT.com and main FT reporters have been merged into single entity, tasked with creating print content for the web, for the print edition, as well as commissioning and appearing in video content for the web (finished by professional video editors). The reporters are given the option of putting out short versions of breaking news, then adding to the story based on talking to sources, or using Reuters wire copy for the initial break and then posting a story when fact-finding is completed. Montgomery noted that FT.com is not averse to receiving b-roll video material from PR firms as long as it is short and visually arresting (no talking heads, please). Though they do not currently use any video from PR firms, and don’t foresee using b-roll footage extensively in the future.
Blogging is a key part of the FT.com strategy, with nearly 20 of the reporters as regular bloggers. There are also industry blogs for technology, energy, UK politics and EU politics, as well as their flagship finance blog: FT Alphaville. FT journalists “get quite a few comments on their blogs and on their stories,” Montgomery said.
Why does this continuum matter for mainstream media? I had lunch today with Josh Spear and Aaron Dignan of Undercurrent, a digital consulting firm advising Fortune 500 companies on Generation Y. I learned that on a Sunday morning, Gen Yers are inclined to sit on their beds checking out news on a wireless basis, from the Drudge Report to Treehugger.com to Gawker to Seth Godin. The Sunday NY Times is also on their list for the Sunday magazine, for Rob Walker’s Consumed column, but also to check out Walker’s blog on NY Times.com, where they post comments. When researching current delegate totals for the two Democratic presidential candidates, they choose among BBC.com, WSJ.com, NYTimes.com and ElectoralVote.com, sharing insights with friends on Facebook or other social media. Spear and Dignan skip advertising, whether ignoring pop-ups or fast forwarding on DVR. They integrate peer recommendation with journalist observation.
As accountability media asserts its credibility based on resources, experience and excellence of team, it is important for PR to involve regular people through social media to provide observations that humanize and connect, so that the ‘voice of authority’ is friend and confidante. In this light, PR must facilitate the links to experiences while providing authoritative background material that can improve the conversation.
Posted by Edelman at February 13, 2008 11:58 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.edelman.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/460
Comments
Hi, and thanks for the mention.
One clarification: My site is not on or part of NYTimes.com. It's a separate entity run by me. The Times does link to it from the online version of my column, and certainly people manage to find it. But don't look on the times site, look at Murketing.com.
Thanks again though. Cheers, Rob Walker
Posted by: Rob Walker at February 14, 2008 6:41 AM