So we had a meeting with the FT the other week only to be informed that we are to be charged a significant amount of money for the privilege of measuring any articles from their newspaper and website.  This is just for analysis mind, not for supplying content to our clients.  Although it feels like we are being picked on, the FT is attempting to do the same with all media analysis companies as well as press cutting agencies, news aggregators and all of our clients.  Given this will be done on a ‘number of users’ basis, it is likely that a big corporate could be charged tens of thousands of pounds for their FT license.

Titles such as the FT and Wall Street Journal have tried to offer subscription-only content a number of times with limited success.  However, going after the corporates themselves rather than the consumer represents a significant shift in strategy.  It could be a potentially large revenue stream for the FT but it also poses a massive risk.  Not surprisingly, many organisations are up in arms about it and there is a likelihood that it will drive users away from the FT's website.

Given that most revenue for online newspapers comes from advertising which in turn is related to website traffic, this may not be smart thinking.  Indeed a quick look at Alexa.com shows an 18% fall in site traffic since the FT started rolling out their content licensing in April.  Our contact at the FT said that they weren’t interested in raw numbers because it’s the ‘quality of readers that counts: while our content is read by CEO’s, companies will want to advertise with us’.  I am not sure that this view is necessarily true.  FT ad rates are already twice the national newspaper average (£50 compared to £25 per thousand views, source: Mediatel).  If website traffic falls, then ad rates will have to increase by a similar margin just to maintain the same revenue.  At some stage it becomes unsustainable and a marketer will be driven to use other channels even if their target audience is the CEO.

I hear that the FT wants a “fair and transparent means” of delivering content but all this reminds me about the PR industry’s arguments with the NLA over copywrite licensing.  The newspaper owners are trying to protect ‘their’ content but we all have to understand where the content comes from.  We are seeing more and more evidence of how important the PR industry is in supplying content to journalists, who are under increasing pressure to get their articles published under ever tighter deadlines.  Cost cutting and the growth of online means that there are fewer journalists writing more stories.  Nick Jones in Flat Earth News observes where you used to have a journalist writing one story a day, today they will have to write ten – hence the frequent practice of using content from newswires and press releases.  Indeed researchers at the university of Cardiff showed that about 80% of home news content in broadsheet newspapers had originated from agency or PR copy.

What happens if other media owners follow suit and start charging significantly for access to content to the very people who helped supply it in the first place.  Isn’t there the danger that the whole news production line could grind to a halt?