The difference a scoop makes
In November 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, the Financial Times carried a scoop: 'Dubai admits it cannot pay its debts'. The story drove visitors to FT.com and prompted international atttention:
- In first 12 hours, the story had 200,000+ visits; in the next 12 hours another 200,000.
- Seven out of the top 10 most read stories of the website featured Dubai.
- Regulators and bankers in US and UK called the FT to ask what was happening.
- The news stories were backed by regional, market and industry analysis.
- An editorial comment on the story was one of the top 10 most read.
Another FT scoop was about Rupert Murdoch's News Corp 'de-indexing' its newpaper, ttelevision and other and websites from Google and setting up an exclusive deal with Microsoft's Bing:
- FT.com: 250,000 hits every 12 hours at the beginning of the week.
- The FT was credited with the scoop in the New York Journal and New York Times on successive days.
- It was the lead item on Channel 4 News.
The Daily Telegraph's MPs' expenses scoops sold an extra 50,000 copies a day for the paper over a month.
However, being able to assign extra copy sales to an individual scoop is unusual. Instead, their value is in helping to build and sustain reputation and average sales because readers know they are getting the best coverage. And rival journalists know it too.
One of the most high profile journalists during the financial crisis was the FT's Gillian Tett. She was named 2009 Journalist of the Year:
- The judges said she was 'consistently in front of the curve as the world's economy went into meltdown, with clear sharply written stories'.
- She said: 'It's been a good time to be an anorak, covering the finer details of how the financial system works.'
- Other recent awards:
2008 Newspaper of the Year for the FT
2008 Business and Finance Journalist of the Year: Gillian Tett
The next page explores the influence of the Judge Report website ...
