• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About

Neville Hobson

www.nevillehobson.com

  • Podcasts
  • Library

Insights and sharing at the FT

June 24, 2008 by Neville HobsonĀ 

ftnewsroom

I visited the Financial Times headquarters in London yesterday, part of a group of six bloggers who met with some senior FT editors and reporters for an informal get-together to talk about FT.com, blogging, journalism and anything else that took our collective fancies.

As someone who’s been a paid subscriber to FT.com for nearly six years, it was a special thrill for me to visit.

We were an eclectic group of bloggers: Roo Reynolds, Sarah Blow, Patrick Altoft, Andrew Donoghue from ZDNet UK, Robert Andrews from PaidContent UK (who grabbed an interview with FT.com MD Rob Grimshaw while there: read that for some business insight about FT.com), plus me.

It was the first such meeting of its type between bloggers and journalists at FT.com.

Our host was James Montgomery, editor of FT.com, and the epitome of openness and transparency, who took us on a tour. It’s the first time I’ve visited the newsroom of any media organization where a visitor could literally walk around almost at will taking photos and shooting video.

You can get a sense of the scale of the FT newsroom from the photo above which shows just a bit of it. Now imagine that three times as big and that’s the FT.

No surprise to note that it’s chock full of tech as you can see from all the screens. Flat panel Dell monitors, nearly all. (Dell is ubiquitous these days: go into any company, or watch any movie that has a computer on screen, and it’s always Dell you see.)

We did quite a bit of video. If wifi had been available, I would have done live Qik streaming video from my Nokia N95 8GB (no way I’m doing that on a cellular connection). Sarah and Robert were also videoing with their Nokia mobiles.

I’m planning to post some of my video once I’ve decided what to include and what to produce. That’s not likely before next week as I’m travelling the rest of this week. Robert has already posted a video (undoubtedly the advantage of working for a media organization or, at least, having production help!); keep an eye on Sarah’s blog for hers.

Reflecting on the nearly three hours at the FT, I’m most impressed by the openness and willingness to talk expressed by all the FT journalists and staff we met in our meeting and on our walkabout of the newsroom.

In addition to James, they included Kate Mackenzie, Interactive Web Editor; Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Media Editor; Tim Bradshaw, Digital Media Correspondent; Tom Glover, Senior Communications Manager; Sam Jones, FT Alphaville; and Steve Ager from the FT.com video team. We were also fortunate to briefly meet Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director of FT.com, who joined us towards the end of our session.

(My tech interest was piqued especially listening to Steve talking about the high definition Sony video cameras they have. That’s in one of the videos I shot.)

In our meeting, we had an interesting conversation about the Associated Press and its position regarding content use by bloggers, a matter that has been at the heart of a storm of passionate opinion during the past few weeks (and it’s been a discussion topic on the FIR podcast).

I think the consensus view by everyone, journalists and bloggers alike, is that the whole issue of fair use/fair dealing is a very grey one with no template answer you can apply to every situation where someone uses content from a media story to include in a blog post in a way that they think is fair (and try and define ‘fair’ to a lawyer).

The FT certainly has a far more flexible approach, though, than the rigidity exhibited by the AP with their take-down notices and lawyers everywhere.

I often use a paragraph or two from an FT story to illustrate a point I want to make in a post I’m writing. I’m wholly relaxed doing that as I’m confident of my fair use/fair dealing approach, and I certainly don’t expect to get the kind of hostile treatment the AP has dished out recently in the US.

An equally interesting discussion started on the subject of RSS feeds and full-content versus summaries.

My view as a consumer and creator of RSS feeds is that full content is what you ought to offer. From a consumer point of view, one obvious benefit is being able to read your RSS content when you’re offline, such as I can do with FeedDemon. That’s going to be very useful tomorrow, for instance, when I’m on an 8-hour plane journey; one of the things I plan to do on the trip is catch up with RSS.

From a creator point of view, I think it offers great benefits to expose your content widely through sharing and other opportunities to connect people with it. That tends not to happen with summary RSS feeds.

But offering full content RSS feeds is not the FT’s view as articulated by Kate, who is firmly of the opinion that offering full content is the equivalent of giving away your content.

The FT offers a wide range of RSS feeds for news and editorial content, none of which is full content, purely summaries.

This is clearly a hot topic as it occupied quite a bit of our attention throughout. One compromise I suggested is making available full content feeds to paying subscribers where you gain access to those feeds in your RSS reader through a user ID and password.

It’s technically easy (I have a couple of such feeds related to clients that I access in FeedDemon) but it might not be so easy actually doing it. No media organization does this as far as I’m aware.

It’s got me thinking quite a bit and I plan a post on this specific topic soon.

So, some initial thoughts on a useful and enjoyable experience at the FT, one that gave everyone some insights and sharing of points of view that I believe reflect the new nature of media relationships today.

And let’s face it, if you’re writing something from a business perspective that’s published on the web, you’re media in one form or another.

Thanks again to Drew Benvie and Ben Matthews of Hotwire PR who set it all up. Check out the photos at Flickr.

 ftbloggermeet

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Mainstream Media, Public Relations, RSS, Social Media, Web

About Neville Hobson

Communication Leader, Social Media Leader, Consultant, Digital Change Agent, Speaker with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Social Media Strategist at the Internet Society. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker. Follow @jangles on Twitter

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Steve Lubetkin says

    June 24, 2008 at 22:53

    Like you, Neville, I’m a long-time subscriber/admirer of the FT. I think it’s a real quality newspaper in a sea of dross. I wish your meeting had been taking place when I was in London last week, as our Original Tour bus drove past the FT building and actually made a stop near there for people going to the museum on that side of the Thames. I very nearly wanted to stop in and introduce myself to Lucy Kellaway, whose column on how stupid companies can be is always guaranteed to make me laugh out loud.

    Great summary of the visit, and the quality of the resources (people and tech) at the FT. Hope to visit there next time in London!

  2. Michael Tangeman says

    June 24, 2008 at 23:25

    Great post, Neville. Really thoughtful look into not only the FT newsroom, but the interstices of blogging and journalism, as well. Thoroughly enjoyable read. Look forward to your video posts.

  3. neville says

    June 24, 2008 at 23:42

    Agreed, Steve: it’s quality, one of the reasons why I continue to pay to access the content. Or more specifically, access content written by some interesting people that I can’t get anywhere else.

    I just wish all of it came via RSS!

    Thanks, Michael. It will be next week before I get the video sorted out. Robert’s video is good, worth taking a look.

  4. Robert Andrews says

    July 2, 2008 at 19:48

    >> “Robert has already posted a video (undoubtedly the advantage of working for a media organization or, at least, having production help!)”

    Au contraire, Neville! I edited the video together, on the same phone I shot it with, by myself, when I got back from the FT that afternoon.

Trackbacks

  1. Neville Hobson with some ‘Insights and Sharing at the FT’ « media mindshare: news media, technology & public relations says:
    June 24, 2008 at 23:20

    […] out his post, titled Insights and sharing at the FT … well worth the read, I’d […]

  2. Murphy’s Law » Something for the weekend.. says:
    June 28, 2008 at 00:08

    […] Hobson reports on his visit to meet editors and reporters at the […]

  3. FreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » Should CEOs blog? says:
    July 11, 2008 at 23:19

    […] Insights and sharing at the FT […]

  4. Making FT.com compelling : NevilleHobson.com says:
    July 28, 2008 at 13:23

    […] recall this access model for the Financial Times’ online content as a discussion topic during my visit to FT.com last […]

  5. FT stays in the pink — NevilleHobson.com says:
    November 10, 2008 at 10:57

    […] Insights and sharing at the FT […]

Primary Sidebar

What To Expect

Neville Hobson
Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Instagram Flipboard
Perspectives at the intersection of business, communication and technology - communicator, blogger and podcaster Neville Hobson analyses and discusses trends, behaviours and practices in digital and social communication to help you understand what they mean for people and organizations. More...

Popular In The Past 30 Days

  • The Last Supper in 16 billion pixels close-up - 218 views
  • How to report Twitter hashtag spammers - 120 views
  • Generation Z vs Millennials: There’s quite a difference - 110 views
  • The dawn of 2014 - 93 views
  • A shout-out to Samsung for great customer service - 54 views
  • Finally a fix for the noisy fan on a Fujitsu Stylistic Q704 - 52 views
  • How to make your business card a smart card - 47 views
  • Images in email: Are you now safe from the hidden tracking pixel? - 44 views
  • Good example of a social media press release from ING - 37 views
  • For Immediate Release 172:
    The double-edged sword of a Facebook meme
    - 31 views

Social Streams

Twitter, Instagram, Etc

Search This Site

Vuelio Top 10 Blog

Creative Commons license
Copyright © 2019 Neville Hobson. Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons International License.
Site version 10.1 · Powered by WordPress and Genesis Framework ·
RSS · Read Terms & Conditions of Use · Privacy Policy
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.