FT editor Lionel Barber on paying for news online

2009

Lionel Barber, Editor of the Financial Times, explains why the FT introduced a paywall on their website in 2002, and why he believes that paying for online content is a necessity. The FT website currently hosts around 117,000 subscribers, but this is only 10% of their registered users. Hiding content behind a paywall was a decision taken in order to preserve the quality of news analysis and comment, which is expensive to produce and which sets the FT apart from its competition. Acknowledging that people consider it their right to have free access to the news, Barber suggests that the way to encourage people to pay is to offer high quality content and have a unique selling point, citing the television model made so successful by BSkyB as evidence that paying for content is a viable option.

Barber sees the BBC as a strong competitor, but says that competition is something to be relished by the FT, not feared. Moving on to the subject of aggregators, he accepts that bloggers are now part of the internet landscape and suggests that the onus is on the news organisations to produce content that people are prepared to pay for rather than use aggregation services.