Digital Newspaper Strategies at the Financial Times

A month ago, I’d mentioned Nigel Pocklington‘s appointment to the newly created role of director of online publishing for the Financial Times. From London, Kieren McCarthy points me to an article he wrote today in The Independent about Pocklington’s role at FT.com and thoughts about paid content and also publishing to handheld mobile devices. This good article also quotes the thoughts of Simon Waldman of The Guardian and Annelies van den Belt of the Times, and Alex White of the UK Association of Online Publishers about some of those same subjects.

Publishing to handheld devices is already beginning to transform the news business in South Korea and Japan. I believe that the first English-speaking market that it will transform is the United Kingdom, due to already widespread consumer adoption of fairly advanced mobile phone handsets and texting, fierce competition among the national dailies, and the follout of 3G (UMTS) services.