FT Not Giving Up on Print

Robert Andrews of PaidContent.org reports that the Financial Times parent is distancing itself from comments made earlier this week by a Pearson executive about the sun setting on print newspapers.

Andrews writes, “Today, Pearson distanced itself from Madi Solomon’s remarks, saying they were incorrect.

‘We’ve got no plans to scale back the print operations. We’ve got 23 print sites, we are opening new ones – we opened Abu Dhabi this year and are hopeful of being able to commence printing in India some time soon,’ a spokesperson told paidContent:UK.

‘The print readership is actually growing for the FT. We’re gaining on all the big reader surveys — more people are reading the FT in print than ever before. Our print revenues are showing good growth.’ The spokesperson said Pearson sees print and digital as ‘complementary, not substitutional.’

‘It’s clearly something you would monitor over time,’ Pearson’s spokesperson added. ‘If you got to a point where digital was growing extremely rapidly and print was falling very fast in a particular geographical area, that might be something you’d want to look at … on a case-by-case basis.’”

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