CIPR Corporate and Financial Group : where corporate and financial communications meet

Paul Murphy, Editor of Alphaville, 14 February 2012

CIPR Corporate and Financial Group meeting, 14 February 2012

Report by Julia Riviere, Grayling

This was the first appearance of FT Alphaville at a C&FG lunchtime meeting and it was fascinating to hear from Paul Murphy how this inner sanctum within the FT became the success story it is today. Inner sanctum is apt in more ways than one. The Alphaville team sit, quite literally, in the middle of the FT newsroom and are pretty much left to their own devices with no formal editorial engagement with their colleagues.

Alphaville was born six years ago and became in effect the FT's first blog, zooming right into the heart of the FT's traditional financial markets community. Paul was the first hire of current Editor, Lionel Barber. He recalls that "Lionel was fascinated by Media Guardian and how that had managed to reach right into a particular community. He wanted something similar for the FT that was completely fresh, very City of London focused, loud and noisy and could make an impact very quickly."

His first step was to introduce the core Alphaville Blog in the style of freeform journalism running from 6am London time to 6pm New York time. Accompanying this is The Cut, the editorial team's top news picks from London, New York and Hong Kong are delivered daily at 6am to readers' inboxes.

Paul recounted how Alphaville's next innovation came out of a eureka moment: "My teenage daughters spend their lives instant messaging. I saw a way to re-create the atmosphere of dealing rooms, in terms of live conversation and the same instant messaging." Markets Live runs for an hour at 11am each day and is hosted by different members of the Alphaville team. Its novelty was a surprise to some. "At first, we got people ringing up to say they couldn't hear anything. Now we get hundreds of comments each day."

"In many ways we are run in a completely opposite way to a conventional news operation," explained Murphy. "We have no hierarchies; everyone sources, writes and edits their own stories although we share the housework such as moderating comment. Our production timeline can be down to 3 to 4 minutes if it needs to be but much depends on the speed of events on the day. On a slow day we'll do more thoughtful pieces, on a busy day it's short snippets."

Three years ago, Paul introduced Alphaville's exclusive comment and analysis arena, The Long Room. Named after the eponymous Grade 1 listed cellar and restaurant that was always a hub of gossip in the City, the Long Room gives finance professionals the ability to share their research and thoughts on financial markets. It now has some 15,000 members including Cabinet Ministers and very senior financiers, with anonymity guaranteed. "Members are free to share what they want, research, ideas, whatever."

Alphaville now reaches 40,000 to 50,000 readers a day, far more than its original target of 5,000-10,000. A refresh is planned over the coming months. This will see some tweaks particularly to the Long Room, to up its curatorship quotient, improve navigation and interactivity and add a few more tools. Paul explained the aim was to get readers more involved than they already are - for example, by giving them a say in which subjects are covered or researched, what companies are investigated. "Getting the reader involved is crucial, as is talking to the PR community. We're ready to discuss things so just pick up the phone. We're more than happy to go back into a post and correct something if it warrants it."

"We're not experts," continued Murphy. "Alphaville is about conversational journalism and the readership always knows more than us on pretty much everything we write about, so we welcome feedback. We have guest bloggers on the site and a number of guest editors. We welcome ideas from PRs and will happily re-publish good thought leadership material, if genuinely insightful."

Among the questions asked, was how do Alphaville deal with the spread of false rumours? Using an apt metaphor, Murphy replied that, "You get the letters page you edit. The community moderates itself and on the whole, readers seem to behave themselves."

What was clear to the assembled audience is that Alphaville is very certain of its identity within the FT - it even has its own alumni - but has no intention of resting on its laurels.

Key facts

Working day: the London team typically work 7am to 5pm after which the NY team follows on NY hours with Kate Mackenzie taking over in Sydney working Asia hours - so pretty much 24 hours.

Locations: London, New York, Zurich and Sydney.

Best time to contact: 11am-12pm during Markets Live off bounds but otherwise happy to do coffees or lunches outside of that.

Readership: 35% - 40% UK; 35% US; rest is spread internationally.

Sector Specialisms: not formally but Izabella Kaminska follows Commodities; Lisa Pollack is interested in CDS market; Joseph Cotterill in the Eurozone; Paul will look at everything.

Big issues for this year