Financial Times To Raise Price

The Financial Times is to raise its cover price from £1 on weekdays to £1.30, with its weekend edition also seeing an increase, by 30p to £1.80.

The weekend price rise comes into effect from tomorrow, whilst the weekday price rise starts from Monday.

Across the pond, the Wall Street Journal will also undergo a rise, of 50% to $1.50 (around 75p) from July 16. The title’s European and subscription price will not alter.

Both titles are confident that readers will be willing to pay more for the specialist information they supply, a notion that was given backing recently by Rupert Murdoch, who said in a recent interview with his Fox television network: “The value of financial journalism – high-quality financial journalism – is that you can charge for it.”

The latest ABC figures, for May 2007, show that the Financial Times was the only national newspaper not to post a year on year downturn in circulation.

The FT recorded a small rise of around 1,600 copies year on year, taking its total circulation figure to just over 452,000 copies (see ABC National Newspaper Round-Up: May 2007).

The FT recently underwent a redesign aimed at making the paper more accessible and modern, adding more colour and a new masthead to its well-known salmon pink pages (see Redesign And Marketing Push To Modernise Financial Times).

Financial Times: 0207 873 3000 www.ft.com