There has been a lot of anxiety and doom and gloom around because of digital and what it means to print. We don’t subscribe to that, we feel there is a very robust and healthy future for print that will run alongside the rise of digital distribution and digital devices. We have seen our own print readership grow alongside the digital readership*. Admittedly, circulation volumes in some of our regions have come down a bit, but readership is key and we have been concentrating on the yield and quality of readership, rather than just volume.

What role does print play at the FT? How do you see its role going forward?

We have continued to invest in print, we opened an operation in the Middle East in 2008, we are investing in the weekend edition everywhere. So we are pretty optimistic about print, we don’t see it as a binary situation where new technology comes along and old ones disappear. We think they all have a unique role in the spectrum of formats and publications - print has its own unique advantages.

What makes a newspaper special and why it is always going to be there, is that quite often with digital distribution, you are only getting what you specifically asked for, which has its place in the mix of formats. But for our audience, to be a successful senior business person you also need a broad spectrum of news. It’s what Donald Rumsfeld said, and I don’t quote him that often: "There are things you know, things you don’t know and things you don’t know you don’t know". Newspapers are very important for the latter. You could be reading an article about the Chinese economy that you have sought out and beside that you have something about what is going on in Sri Lanka or Sweden the reader wouldn’t have thought about looking up. It is that ability to surprise readers, to bring them information that they were not looking for but that is still relevant to them and that broadens there perspective. It is a very unique format.

How does print work with other platforms?

I am a prime example of the way multiple formats can work together. I consume FT journalism through the 6am report on my Blackberry, I read the newspaper on the way to work, I switch on to FT.com when I get to work, I have my iPad app – this is the way people now consume news.

Pay walls are becoming popular, what is your view on paid content?

From our experience, you don’t want to be completely dependent on print advertising as it is volatile and cyclical. But also, journalism is a valuable and important thing, and we have to invest significantly as we have a global news organisation with 550+ journalists and that costs a lot of money, and we feel that it is appropriate and right that our readers pay for content

Also, I think it was Henry Luce, the former editor of Time magazine, who said it is not good for a publication to be solely dependent on advertising. You need a direct relationship with your readers.

The final thought that has come to light for us with our paid for subscription model is just how much information you get about your readers. As much as I love print and printed newspapers, it can be a fairly anonymous relationship with readers, where as with digital you have a tremendous window into your relationship with them and that helps a tremendous amount with product development, marketing, advertising – it is a very powerful component. The basic premise, though, is that quality journalism is valuable and we should charge for it.

But will people pay for what they were getting for free before?

It is a lot easier for us in charging for content that was free before as most of our content is specialist and quite often unique information that can’t be got anywhere else. It might benefit us being a business publication, but also we have been determined to build a global network of journalists others don’t have so readers have access to a network of politicians and international business leaders that can’t be got elsewhere.

I think it is possible, though, for all publications to find a way of charging –there is no single model that works for everyone. It is harder for more general newspapers but there are ways of being creative to overcome that and it all comes down to the basic question: if you are producing something people are willing to pay for then they will, and if you are not, then you have to ask yourself what you are doing.

Will the rise of digital print change the way newspapers are printed and distributed?

We see digital print as a massive opportunity, indeed we already have a digital print outlet in Malta and are experimenting with it in several other locations.

Our basic philosophy is that we are channel neutral and device neutral, it is up to the reader how they consume FT journalism. Depending on demand and location, it may make sense to have an offset print plant, it may make sense to have a digital printer – we are fairly agnostic over precisely which format or device we go for, but certainly with the advantages and advances we are seeing with digital print technology, it is going to potentially be a pretty exciting solution for certain markets.

Should content be tailored to each individual platform or is an integrated system better?

We were quite early in the game to fully integrate our newsroom. We believe in one expression of FT journalism, across all formats - our readers want that consistency. Obviously, though, various formats require slightly different story lengths or layouts, but the fundamental premise of our journalism holds true over all our channels.

Do you think the signs of the media splintering into smaller, niche publications will continue?

In general, there has been a fragmentation of media and news media, and that may have been accelerated by digital and digital distribution as you can have a very focused publication online. In print, in magazines it has long been a very specialised product, less so in newspapers.  But I am a big believer in niches and in specialised information, I think that just as readers are happy and comfortable with several different devices, they are also happy with several different levels of engagement – so a more general view then moving to a more specific view, especially with business and finance where professions and jobs are extremely focused now and they need that specialist information.

This is something we have been exploring ourselves by producing a range very specialised publications, be it investment in China or the fund management sector, we are very keen to develop niche subject areas and niche publications as we see very strong engagement from our readers in this way.

Going forward, is choosing the next step a reactive or proactive process for publishers?

It is a situation of understanding the consumer demand. It is very difficult for any publisher now to set the agenda in terms of format for consuming the news. If you look at the iPad it has come out of nowhere very quickly. We had 250,000 downloads of the iPad app in the first month [400k since launch], and it is now a very important source of subscribers [drives 10% of digital subscriptions]. So the market is telling us that readers engage through that device so we need to make sure our edition on the iPad is as good as possible. We have to be very alert and nimble to trends.

Frankly, it is very encouraging as my sense is that these tablets do, in a sense, have a newspaper feel to them – they are very tactile, you are touching the screen, you can almost build the emotional relationship you make with a newspaper that is printed. The extent to which that encourages cohorts of new readers into a newspaper market is pretty important and pretty exciting.

* FT circulation figures

Print and Digital Paid-for Circulation - 563,026 (31 May to 4 July 2010 - assured by Deloitte)

FT print ABC circulation - 376,564 (August 2010)

FT.com registered users - 2.7 million

FT digital subscribers - 149k (H1 2010)

Average Daily Global Audience (ADGA) - 1.9 million