The NUJ at the Financial Times has warned editor Lionel Barber against single edition of the newspaper.

News that the Financial Times intends to introduce a single edition of the newspaper has not been received well by the National Union of Journalists chapel at the daily newspaper.

The plan would mean that the Financial Times would forgo late night updates.

If the plan goes ahead, around 15 night editorial staff are facing redundancy.

In May, Lionel Barber told staff that the plans would take effect from 1st October 2015 - 6 months sooner than the originally planned March 2016.

In his email to staff, Barber said: “We have progressively simplified the production of the newspaper. We made another breakthrough with last year's redesign. The next step, supported by the FT's commercial teams, is to move to a single edition, one for the UK and one for international."

The ultimate goal of the plan is to reach a combined print and digital circulation of 1M by 2018.

As of February 2015, the newspaper had 504, 000 digital subscribers.

 

 

 

 

"Digital subscribers now make up more than 70 per cent of our total circulation. We have successfully simplified the production of the newspaper over the last two years in response to greater reader demand for digital news. The newspaper is now both profitable - before advertising - and in demand, complementing our journalism in other formats." said a Financial Times spokesperson. "The move to a single print edition isn’t about cutting jobs. It is a natural evolution to reflect the new balance between digital and print. As readership habits change, the way we deliver news must also evolve. With the same number of staff, we have boosted our digital capacity with new roles in London and are doing the same in New York and Hong Kong. Recent appointments include a head of aggregation, FirstFT and fastFT writers, communities editor and a head of audience engagement."