How FT Alphaville did the business on Meltdown Monday

Posted by Peter Kirwan on 16 September 2008 at 16:04
Tags: Pearson PLC

It was the kind of day that comes around once a decade — possibly less frequently — for City hacks. (Although there might be a few more of them to come by the look of it.)

The Daily Mail, ITN and the Telegraph called it Meltdown Monday.

Strange but true: reading the FT’s web site last night was an oddly static, unsatisfying, experience. Online, the Pink ‘Un struggled oddly to conveyed any sense of the significance, of events.

I’m not sure why. Design constraints might have something to do with it. Alternatively, perhaps the FT’s stable of high-end analysis writers are still geared to writing for print.

The lead story when I visited — Stocks sink amid Wall St crisis — was a little more than a basic recap of the day’s events.

This morning’s print edition was another matter: plenty of crisp and well-packaged stories, with the likes of Gillian Tett asking some sharp “what’s next” questions. Essential reading.

The one part of the FT’s site that really caught fire yesterday was Alphaville.

Alphaville ran three live blogging sessions yesterday — the last of them kicking off at 15:34 (Crisis Live — iii).

In the process, authors Paul Murphy and Neil Hume left a trail of gems behind them. Readers adding comments only enriched the haul. In terms of drama and cut-through, this mix of journalism and reader comment left the FT’s home page way behind.

Trying to get a look at Markets Live on Alphaville this afternoon wasn’t easy. Pages were loading slowly — quite possibly because of traffic volumes.

This feels like real citizen journalism to me — smart, engaging, hotter than hell, unfolding in front of your eyes and as interactive as you like.

Messrs Murphy and Hume (plus their backroom staff) have just proved a very big point. Lionel Barber, the FT’s editor, will have plenty to think about when things calm down.

For you, Mr Gowers, the war is over

Posted by Peter Kirwan on 12 September 2008 at 10:31
Tags: Pearson PLC

To say that Andrew Gowers was a popular editor of the Financial Times would be stretching it a bit.

Gowers left the FT abruptly in 2006 after a five-year stint. He cited “strategic differences” and made his way to the investment bank Lehman Brothers, where he became head of corporate communications.

If you’ve ever wondered what the highly-paid PRs employed by banks like Lehman actually do for a living, an answer is at hand.

Typically, once every decade, amid a nasty financial crisis, they fight like good ‘uns to convince the world that their employer isn’t going to go down in flames.

Gowers has been doing this for the past few month, grappling with a tide of rumours about Lehman Brothers that culminated in this week’s announcement of an apocalyptic $3.9bn quarterly loss.

Fat lot of good his time at the FT did him.

Lehman has always enjoyed a reputation for sailing close to the wind. Now everyone and his mum suspects that the bank’s taste for dodgy mortgages willconsign it to the great credit crunch in the sky.

Gowers must have been mildly chagrinned by the coverage he received in the FT’s Lex column, which described the bank’s post-results rescue plan as “incomplete” and full of “good intentions” and “token gestures”.

But there was worse to come at FT Alphaville, which has taken to calling the bank “Lehmon” (as in lemon). The Alphaville hacks described Lehman’s chief executive “broken and defeated” during this week’s emergency conference call.

But that was nothing compared with the vilification handed out by Alphaville’s readers in the comments. Or the outlook as envisaged by the Independent’s always-excellent Jeremy Warner.

For Mr Gowers, it would seem, the war is over. . . He hasn’t resigned yet. But according to the Daily Telegraph, a new career in Whitehall beckons.

Er, what was that about a broad-based recession?

Posted by Peter Kirwan on 29 July 2008 at 22:55
Tags: Daily Mail & General Trust, Media, Pearson PLC, United Business Media

This morning, United Business Media turned in revenues up by 10.4% YOY for the six months to the end of June. Cash conversion improved, and so did operating profit (up 11.4%).

Even CMPi managed growth of 6.2% (although margins dipped slightly below 20%).

For the journalists among you, it’s worth pointing out that all of this happened inside a company (UBM as a whole) where only 25% of revenues are now generated by print. That’s down from 56% four years ago.

It’s just as well, then, UBM’s events business is doing a fair impression of the Duracell bunny. In his presentation to analysts this morning, David Levin, UBM’s chief executive, kept the best news until his last slide, which contained these bullet points:

– Forward bookings across UBM’s major events scheduled for 2H08 are 10% ahead of the previous year.

– Bookings for 2009 major events demonstrating good growth — 10% ahead.

Pearson was also presenting half-year results this morning. There, the FT Group delivered revenues up by 11% for the half-year. Much of that was attributable to the group’s Interactive Data division. But FT Publishing itself managed a 2% increase in subscription, circulation and advertising revenues.

Not bad given what’s happening to City jobs and financial services advertising.

Dame Marjorie sounded over the moon. She told the FT: “In downturns, companies like ours, which have consistently invested and have very strong balance sheets, have huge opportunities. This [the next couple of years] is probably going to be the most fun time I have had yet in this job.”

How so? Scardino mentioned acquisitions, “bolt-ons, things which are hugely synergistic”.

Whether or not she’s thinking — in part? — about enriching the FT Group with acquisitions remains to be seen.

Three or four years ago, when the FT was languishing miserably at the bottom of its profit cycle, investors would have demanded Scardino’s head on a pikestaff at Traitor’s Gate if she’d so much as hinted at such a thing. Now, as the FT prepares to confront a rampaging Wall Street Journal, there’s just a chance that things might be different.

Stranger things have happened.