Former FT Editor Slams Newspapers’ Online Attitude
Recently departed editor of the Financial Times, Andrew Gowers, has lashed out at the newspaper industry as a whole, lambasting what he claims is denial over the power of the internet and the continued pinning of its hopes on redundant technology.
“Working in print, pure and simple, is the 21st century equivalent of running a record company specialising in vinyl,” Gowers writes in a column for the Evening Standard. “The future lies with the internet, and those newspapers that survive will be those that produce truly original content and translate it into the all-encompassing, all-singing, all-dancing new medium of the web.”
Singled out for particular criticism was News Corporation chairman, Rupert Murdoch, who continues to “chuck good money after bad” according to Gowers, who slated his “spanking new all colour presses and DVD circulation gains for the Times.”
Gowers left the FT last month citing “strategic differences” with the paper’s management, and has no plans to return to the medium. “Whatever it is [I do next], it will not involve ink printed on dead trees,” he said.
The scornful remarks are not directed at the Financial Times in particular, which has embraced digital technology and the internet with several wide-reaching initiatives.
Earlier this year the FT’s director of online publishing, Nigel Pocklington, addressed London’s Ad:Tech conference, explaining the need to integrate traditional and interactive media was more urgent than ever (see FT Boss Claims Convergence Is The Key To Success).
“We have to recognise that consumer habits have changed,” he said. “It took the FT over 100 years to reach a million people in print. It has taken us less than ten years to reach four million online.”
New products from the pink paper include a specially designed version for easy viewing on PDAs, while the title’s online offering has been more closely integrated with the core FT newspaper brand.
“Business people want news, comment and analysis where they are and whenever they need it,” Pocklington explained. “We don’t care whether they get it through the paper, via online or on their PDA – as long as they get it from the FT.”
Those at the FT are not the only media commentators to dismiss traditional media in favour of increasingly converged online content. Last month saw Microsoft founder Bill Gates predict an internet-only future, where all media owners deliver content electronically.
In the near future the debate between online and offline advertising will be “obsolete,” according to Gates, who said that, as convergence continues to blur boundaries advertisers will have no choice but to turn their back on conventional, physical media (see Gates Predicts A Converged Future For Online Advertising).
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