The Financial Times - Journalism Now

The Financial Times was founded in 1888 by James Sheridan. I was quite surprised to learn that when the Financial Times was first published, it was in competition with three other finance based newspapers. I later found that the reason I had never heard of any of the other finance papers was largely because by 1945 the Financial Times had been so successful that all the other finance papers were pushed out of the market. This meant that the Financial Times had no direct competition from any other daily paper, which has largely contributed to its success

The Financial Times is the only daily finance paper in the UK, but despite this it does not have mass appeal with the British population. The Financial Times define their readers as; business leaders, government ministers, international entrepreneurs, bankers, investors, educators and students. So what are the reasons for such a relatively niche audience?

It is probable that the lower classes would not read the Financial Times for the simple reason that it does not interest them. An average lower class citizen has no need to know about the worldwide business market, or the London stock exchange in any detail.

 It could be argued that it is always useful to know what is happening in the financial world but I, and I’m sure a lot of you, only take notice of the financial world if something is happening that is going to directly affect me. And in cases where the financial world is going to impact me dramatically, it is quite likely that ordinary daily papers will pick up on the story.

Take for example, the Credit Crunch. Essentially, this is a financial matter, but it was covered by every newspaper, including papers which do not specialise in finance because it was something that had a huge impact on the general population. Even the Daily Sport reported on the Credit Crunch with the headline “£5 a pint – Credit Crunch gets serious”.

Some of the headline news stories of the Financial Times are also featured in other daily papers. Take for example the story a couple of weeks ago about the engine failure of the Qantas Airbus. The Daily Mail headline for this story read “World is watching Qantas after midair explosion.” The Financial Times however, went with the headline “Airbus superjumbo under scrutiny after engine failure on Qantas flight.”

It is clear from these two examples that stories in the Financial Times are very factual rather than being exaggerated in order to make them more interesting. After reading the Financial Times I have become quite used to this, and find the exaggerated headline of other newspapers to be rather amusing. I think that the Financial Times is more factual because it knows that the readers are only interested in the actual facts.

Every day on the cover of the Financial Times is a section called “News Briefing” which sums up the news for the reader. This means that before even opening the paper, readers are able to see what the main news stories are instead of just the headline stories. This could be because readers of the FT perhaps do not have the time to sit and read the paper during their busy day, so instead they are told the summarised news in a simple and efficient manner.

Ultimately, the Financial Times is a well established and respected finance paper with loyal readers in the ABC1 social brackets.