The FT was definitely in safe hands with Scardino

Raymond Snoddy on the speculation surrounding the Financial Times in light of Scardino’s departure from Pearson and the uncertainty facing Alexander Lebedev…

Everyone has to shuffle off in the end. The lucky ones go at a time of their own choosing, with their dignity intact and praise ringing in their ears.

Dame Marjorie Scardino, who hands over the chief executive role at Pearson – the education and publishing group – at the end of the year after 17 years in charge, is one of the lucky ones.

The chosen successor John Fallon is a Pearson insider who has been running the company’s education businesses in the US – the primary focus of the company these days.

The Pearson board have remained true to its natural habits by opting for continuity in the succession rather than throwing all the balls into the air.

Inevitably the questions about the future ownership of the Financial Times are already flowing thick and fast.

One of the things that always irritated Dame Marjorie was that however well Pearson did all anyone wanted to talk about was the FT – around 7% of the business.

And so it was again as she announced her retirement from Pearson. While she was there the FT was safe. It was in the hands of someone who said it would be sold “over her dead body”.

The commitment was totally believable, not least because in her youth a tiny newspaper that she owned with her husband Albert – The Georgia Gazette – won a Pulitzer prize. With Scardino the FT was definitely in safe hands.

There is no reason to believe that Fallon will head the paper immediately towards the exit. In his inaugural conference call with journalists, Fallon made the sort of noises you would expect. The Pearson strategy was very much the FT strategy. The FT is “a valuable part of the company”.

Equally unsurprisingly there were no bodies being put on the line – but it has to be a reasonable judgment that under Fallon the FT is more likely to be sold than under Dame Marjorie, if the price and the circumstances are right.

The circumstance could easily be that if the centre of gravity moves ever more towards the US and education, and the negative sentiment towards newspapers in the City – however ill informed – was seen as a drag on the Pearson share price, then anything could happen.

It is that very mechanism, obviously in very different circumstances, that has led Rupert Murdoch to separate his publishing from his other media interests.

Murdoch, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, has always wanted to own the FT. Will Murdoch’s new corporate publishing vehicle try again?

The odds are probably against it but the main point is that there will now be a period of speculation and instability swirling around the FT, something the industry could well do without.

By coincidence, another rather more struggling national newspaper group could also be facing a period of uncertainty .

Alexander Lebedev, the Russian billionaire who owns The Independent, i and the Evening Standard, is reported to be drawing up “contingency plans” for his British media holdings in the face of growing threats from President Putin.

It is unlikely that without Lebedev we would have either The Independent or the Evening Standard by now and i, a welcome addition to the British newspaper scene, might never have been created. Now he faces charges of “hooliganism” – the charge that sent the pop group Pussy Riot to jail.

It has to be said that the apparently mild-mannered Lebedev has not been wise. It really was not very smart to thump property developer Sergei Polonsky during a television interview, however great the provocation.

It has given President Putin, or more probably his servants, a free hit and the fact that the charge is hooliganism rather than common assault speaks to the political nature of the charge and the near inevitability of a guilty verdict.

Rather like Fallon, Lebedev will probably find a way of standing by his UK papers, at least for the foreseeable future. But yet again the situation will inevitably lead to the sort of speculation that the industry could well do without.

In many ways Lebedev has played a difficult hand well in the British industry. The Evening Standard routinely delivers more than 700,000 copies a day and where would The Independent be now with its almost pitiful paid circulation of around 82,000 without 280,000 daily copies of the i?

Lebedev’s ownership of The Independent – apart from his continuing support – is exemplary in another important aspect.

The paper is very open about providing detailed information about its online users and even breaks down the size of audience for particular apps.

As a result we know that for the year to the end of August 2012 The Independent had more than 18,000 unique browsers a month using the BlackBerry app, with more than five million page impressions.

Overall The Independent had 908,579 unique digital browsers daily and 2.6 million page impressions. The numbers come in the form of an official certificate from the ABC, the Audit Bureau of Circulations, and such detailed information is available for all publishers. Not all choose to use it.

Look down the ABC’s Multi-Platform Report and you can find that The Times had a print circulation in July of 404,099 – a rise on the month of nearly 1%.

By The Times’ online column the letters N/A is all that is on offer, as it is every month.
The numbers do of course exist, it’s just that the ABC is prevented from publishing them.

It is difficult to remember when The Times last provided any precise numbers about its online activity behind the paywall. This is counter-productive – secrecy will only lead people to believe the situation is worse than it actually is.

There is even research at another national newspaper group that people are reading up to 50 pages a day through iPad apps, rather than the much more financially depressing “snacking” online generally. Why is such positive news for the industry not being trumpeted? Probably for narrow commercial advantage.

At a time of uncertainty it would be far better for everyone to be as honest and transparent as possible with numbers that are already collected in an authentic way and build the best case for a growth story. Anything else will be seen as defensive and ultimately damaging to the industry.