Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600
- 619)
WEDNESDAY 10 OCTOBER 2007
Mr Lionel Barber
Q600 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
But the numbers have dropped?
Mr Barber: The numbers have dropped in terms
of sales. As a proportion of our overall circulation the UK has
become less important, but it is still very important in terms
of our advertising base and, indeed, our readership still. In
10 years' time I believe the Financial Times will still
exist as a newspaper. The Financial Times content may change
or the vehicles in which the Financial Times material is
delivered may change. We may have a Financial Times which
will spew out of a computer, all these things may be different,
Blackberry content may become more important. In terms of our
market and compared with the BBC, I would say the Financial
Times offers more than just financial news. We have a very
substantial network of correspondents in places like, I have just
been in China, in Beijing, Shanghai, we have six people in Tokyo,
11 people in Washington and four in Brussels. These are people
not just writing about pure finance or even business, they are
writing about policy, they are writing about politics as it affects
business. We will never be a general newspaper. It would be a
big mistake if we tried to compete with some of the other general
newspapers in this country, a big mistake. We are a business newspaper
but we appeal to people around the world in business, finance
and public affairs who make decisions, that is our market.
Q601 Chairman:
Your number one newspaper competitor, would that be The
Wall Street Journal?
Mr Barber: That would be The Wall
Street Journal, my Lord Chairman.
Q602 Chairman:
What is your view upon Rupert Murdoch taking over The Wall
Street Journal? Do you expect the result of that is going
to be increased competition with the Financial Times?
Mr Barber: Most likely.
Q603 Chairman:
Nevertheless, you view this with equanimity, do you?
Mr Barber: Not with equanimity. The Financial
Times believes in competition, we believe in markets, but
we have competed with The Wall Street Journal for
many years. When we launched the US edition of the Financial
Times in 1997 many people predicted that we would be ground
into the dust by various competitors, not least The Wall Street
Journal. In fact, by being very clear in our message, by being
very focused in our coverage, we have carved out a very influential
audience and, crucially, we have increased our price. We have
raised the retail price of the Financial Times in the US
from $1 to $2 in two steps. That is more than The Wall
Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal has
not been able to increase its price by that amount. By the way,
we have also increased our price in the UK this year from £1
to £1.30 with no significant drop in circulation. I would
say that is a good proposition.
Q604 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
Mr Barber, I would like to ask you a very quick question about
the coverage of the FT and then get on to my main question
which is about journalists. You have talked about the UK edition,
a US edition and a European edition and the fact that they alter
a little bit with lipstick and eyeshadow on the front and maybe
some of the content, do you have other editions as well?
Mr Barber: The Asian edition which was launched
in 2003.
Q605 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
You have four editions?
Mr Barber: Yes.
Q606 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
Of course, they are all obviously consumed globally by people
who speak English inevitably?
Mr Barber: Yes. I would say that perhaps in
Europe many of the readers do not have English as their first
language.
Q607 Lord King of Bridgwater:
You do not print any foreign languages, do you?
Mr Barber: No, we own 50% of FT Deutschland,
which is a German language newspaper that takes around four to
five FT articles per day.
Baroness Eccles of Moulton: From what
you have been telling us, and very impressive it has been, the
reputation of the FT, and therefore its global reputation
et cetera, depends very much on its probity, reliability, accuracy,
et cetera, and in order to maintain that I imagine you have to
be dependent on the quality of the journalists you employ. Have
you noticed any change in the market of journalists available
who you can then take on to the newspaper so that this can effect
adversely or favourably in maintaining those very important high
standards?
Q608 Baroness Scott of Needham Market:
My Lord Chairman, my questions could be answered at the same time.
Where do you find your journalists? Are they journalists who become
specialists or do you find specialists who you then train up to
be more journalistic, because it seems to me that some of this
is so specialised and the fact that you are global and you are
integrating on-line and the printed paper, that you are requiring
enormously high levels of skills from the people you employ?
Mr Barber: Lady Eccles, the market has changed,
at least for the Financial Times, in one very important
respect. When we advertise for graduate trainees to come to work
for us we get applications from around the world. We get applications
particularly from America now and, indeed, we have hired some
Americans. We have hired some Americans in our US operation anyway
separately from The Washington Post. We have hired
people from Korea. We have hired people, crucially, who speak
several languages, so I think we have found that the talent pool
for us has become bigger. If you ask me whether the quality of
business journalism in this country is as high as it was, I would
say perhaps in one respect it has improved in that there is more
interest in business journalism, but not necessarily in standards.
That is a general impression, it is not forensic, because when
we are looking to hire we would be looking, perhaps, at somebody
overseas as much as somebody in the UK. To answer your questions,
Lady Scott, if you want to work for the Financial Times
you have to be interested in business. You do not need a degree
in economics. I do not have an economics degree and I managed
to become editor, perhaps that was a mistake! We do have some
very extraordinary gifted people. We get people from think-tanks
who we will put on the commentary team to write leaders rather
than throwing them into reporting because reporting does require
certain basic skills, not least shorthand, being able to ask questions,
interview people, whereas commentary requires a specialist knowledge
and a degree of fluency in writing and having a point of view
that it is different from reporting. We may put them in the commentary
team and then train them as reporters. It would be invidious to
single out certain people but I will in one respect. Probably
the lady who has just performed superbly this year in covering
what is a very, very complicated subject in the credit squeeze
and credit derivatives market is Gillian Tett . She has a PhD
in anthropology, spending a year in Tajikisthan. She is a very
talented lady. She was the Bureau Chief in Tokyo. We have people
who are prepared to work across disciplines and also who are prepared
to travel. As I said earlier, 16 of the 22 years I have spent
on the FT have been out of this country.
Q609 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
Can I ask you one question which we have not addressed at all,
that is the weekend FT which, after all, is a rather different
publication from the Monday to Friday edition?
Mr Barber: Yes. The weekend FT is the
exotic element in the FT's offering. It comprises arts,
reviews and also a magazine which is very profitable called, How
to spend it which specialises in luxury goods, luxury items
and luxury holidays. It is a kind of magalogue, if you like. Then
you have the news sections and the personal finance section. More
than 50% of the people who read the FT at the weekend do
not read the FT during the week. We would really like to
have people reading the FT for six days a week. I should
add that part of the change in the readership is that we are encouraging
people more in the UK now to subscribe and have the paper delivered,
particularly in the M25 area. We have found that is much better
than having a rather promiscuous readership who may or may not
buy the Financial Times at the railway station in the morning.
I think the FT weekend is a newspaper which people really
rather like, they feel it is a warm place and a bit warmer perhaps
sometimes than the weekday paper.
Q610 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
It is as successful overseas?
Mr Barber: Yes.
Q611 Chairman:
Sometimes you make mistakes, every newspaper makes mistakes, how
do you put those right?
Mr Barber: We correct them in the paper immediately.
Q612 Chairman:
Do you have a corrections column?
Mr Barber: We do, we have a corrections column
on the letters page and we have corrections and clarifications.
Either the editor, myself, or the deputy editor or the night editor,
the executive editor, Hugh Carnegy, will be responsible for looking
at all corrections and we have a file on all corrections or complaints
that we have easily accessible. We try to resolve any problems
which readers have with FT articles immediately. It is
very important.
Q613 Chairman:
You do not have a separate independent—
Mr Barber: No.
Q614 Chairman:
You deal with it in the system, so to speak?
Mr Barber: It is in the system and I believe
the editor should be ultimately responsible.
Q615 Chairman:
Then obviously they can go to the Press Complaints Commission?
Mr Barber: They can.
Q616 Chairman:
Do many people do that?
Mr Barber: We have had a handful of instances
and I think if you look at the PCC record in the last two years
we have a pretty good one.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury: You
said earlier that you did think standards among journalists had
slightly dropped.
Q617 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
Business journalists.
Mr Barber: I did not quite say that, I said
that my general impression was while there were more business
journalists, I did not believe necessarily that the quality, at
least when it came to us, was quite the same.
Q618 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
I was just wondering in what way you thought the quality was not
the same.
Mr Barber: I think writing ability and a real
understanding of the way business works and an ability to analyse
at length in clear prose and in a balanced, authoritative, informed
way.
Q619 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Could that be something to do with too much news gathering via
the Internet?
Mr Barber: No.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury: It
is a separate point.
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