Financial Times subscription "upgrade"

As befits a leading UK newspaper, Financial Times is a consummate practitioner of Orwellian "newspeak", the habit of using words to express the opposite of their usual meaning. A case in point is the recent announcement that its Web subscription services have been upgraded. Anybody simple-minded and literal would take it to mean that services have been improved and made easier to the Internet subscribers. For instance, an intensive user of search services, such as me, would expect:

• Increase in speed of search and display

• Higher results accuracy so that one can find an editorial written by somebody, say Henry Kissinger, who has a misfortune not to be a FT journalist

• Ability to download graphics, which are shown in the print edition (and are computer generated)

• Ability to convert articles into pdf format (other than those written by Martin Wolf , which for reasons not intelligible to an outsider are available in this format and also include graphics)

• Stability of the ability of print in a printer-friendly format.

But, of course, such expectations are naïve and misguided. What FT.com apparently wanted to do was to make web subscribers life more difficult and degrade the level of services. Thus, as a result of the changes introduced:

• All users have to reenter their usernames and passwords, as these mysteriously lost their case-sensitivity

• “Edit your profile” facility, which would allow users to change their usernames and passwords, is not available

• The ability to use of printer-friendly format disappeared completely.
  

Predictable outcome is to discourage FT.com subscribers from using search services and to accelerate their migration to wsj.com or reuters.com. This should allow FT staff to produce yet another series of thoughtful articles about difficulties of the coexistence between traditional and new media.