Global Head of FT Lex, Stuart Kirk, joined Gorkana for a briefing on Wednesday 16 January, kindly hosted by Hogan Lovells. Stuart used the following slides during the media briefing.

1. Lex at Gorkana
January, 2013

2. Lex has quit the opinion arms race and is shrinking the
size of the team
London
Stuart Kirk
Work: +44 20 7873 3485
Mobile: +44 7702 761 037
(Head of Lex)
John Casey
New York
Work: +44 20 7873 3938
Mobile: +44 7985 533 902 Robert Armstrong
(Assistant editor) Work: +1 212 641 6134
Mobile: +1 646318 4592
Vince Boland (TMT, consumer, pharma)
Work: +44 20 7873 4073
Mobile: +44 789 441 9108 Nicole Bullock
(Energy, consumer, aerospace, utilities) Work: +1 212 641 6348
Hong Kong Mobile: +1 917 519 4179
Richard Stovin-Bradford (Financials, energy)
Work: +44 20 7873 3554 Jennifer Hughes
Mobile: +44 7738 574 242 Work: +1 212 641 6134 Currently hiring
(Financials, mining) Mobile: +1 646318 4592
(Asia ex-China/India)
Nikki Tait
Work: +44 20 7873 4254
Mobile: +44 7712 854 943
(Industrials, construction, transport, regulation)
Oliver Ralph
Work: +44 20 7873
Mobile: +44 7843 418 140
(TMT, pharma, food & drink, real estate)
Julia Grindell
Work: +1 212 641 6514
Mobile: +1 917 213 4502
(China and India)

3. What is Lex allowed to write about?
 Lex can cover anything, but it is predominantly a corporate column,
seeing the world through the eyes of a investor either in equities or credit
 Therefore, valuation is key. Companies (or any asset class for that matter)
are never good or bad, they are only good or bad relative to a price
 When Lex does write about stories beyond companies, we try to do it where
possible from a company perspective
 We only write purely macro or market stories when the news is significant
AND we feel we can add value
 Lex never, ever writes about politics

4. There are plenty of opportunities throughout the day for
PRs influence what goes on FT.com and in the paper
2:00pm 10:00am
UK 1st web feed US email 5:00pm
UK 2nd web
 Lex notes are written in three general
9am in
10:00am 2 3
timezones, each with its own edition
New Yo
4 2:00pm
1 5
UK email
rk
12 6 US 1st web feed
11 7
10 8
 The aim is to feed the web with at
5:00pm
Asia 2nd 9am in London 9 least one note every four hours on
9a
m
average
in
Ho
web feed 8 10
ng
Ko
ng
7 11
5:00pm
6 12
5 1 US 2nd web feed
4 3 2  The longest gap between published
Lex notes is about 7 hours between
1:00pm US close and Asian lunch time
Asia 1st web feed 10:00am
Asia email

5. When is the best and worst time to call, or to arrange
meetings with Lex?
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2:0
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9:3
7:0
10
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Prepare for
Perusing
Writing Lunch Meetings paper
the news
editions
9am 9:30am 1:30pm 2:30pm 4pm 7pm
 Team at desks and  After team meeting editor  Lunch meetings  Best time to  Team busy
amenable to calls discusses with each writer only if deadline arrange polishing
 Editor deciding line line, logic and argument met or off meetings web-
up and thinking about  Team at desks but on deadline published
who will write what deadline notes for
paper
 A bad time to call with
unrelated issue

6. How can external PRs be useful to Lex and how can Lex
be useful in return?
What Lex wants What Lex can offer
 Original thoughts, facts and  Fair representation
hypotheses  Transparency
 Contact with management  Accountability
 Access to internal data and research  Edits between online and paper
 An impartial sounding board  A ‘way in’ to editorial and newsroom
 Rapid help if necessary  An impartial sounding board
 Intelligence scoops  Intellectual capital and analysis
 Background, experience and history  Another perspective to the news
 Ideas story
 Ideas  A contrarian take on a bad story
 Ideas  A platform for something too weird for
the paper

7. Things that PRs sometimes do which, er, do not help
 Highlighting the good news, hiding the bad
 Repeating the company line
 Sloppy financial logic
 Arranging management calls at very short notice
 Joint interviews with the FT correspondent
 Over briefing chief executives
 Too many requests for feedback

8. Almost everyone reads Lex in the paper, and roughly a
tenth of all visitors to ft.com do
Subscribers accessing Lex content
CEO/president/Chairman (High
Quality), 2%
Exec Mgmt (High Quality), 3%
Technical/Business Specialist, 6%
VP/Director (High Quality), 12%
Senior Manager/Dept Head, 1%
Professional, 11%
Other C Level (High
Quality), 3%
Ow ner/Partner/
Proprietor, 9%
Consultant, 6%
Gov't/Int'l org official, 1%
Manager/Supervisor, 12%
MBA Student, 1%
Other (retired, student etc…), 34%
20% would be classed as “high quality” from
an advertising targeting perspective

9. When is Lex read online?
UK Readership
12%
10%
Average Daily Readership (%)
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Time of Visit (GMT)
Weekly Average Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Weekend

10. Lex readers are a curious bunch, or very bored (or
senior enough to have their own office)
Time spent on ft.com
10
9
8
Average Site Browsing (mins)
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Lex Non-Lex