When technology and tradition click

When cars came along, the early versions were called horseless carriages - and that's exactly what they were. They were built to replicate the carriage experience as fully as possible - running boards, dashboards, fringes on top - with the single exception of the horse.

So it is not surprising that when newspaper web sites first appeared they were largely online versions of the newspaper. Although web site editors have usually wanted to be more daring, the traditions of the organisations within which they work have often ensured sites have had a strong flavour of the parent paper.

With good reason: there is a lot of useful heritage in a well-established newspaper on which to draw, and rejecting it is foolish.

But the time is arriving, as print publications become more at ease with their online presence, to reinforce tradition with the well-established innovations of the web.

That is what the Financial Times is attempting with the new FT.com web site, launched today. In many ways it is the most important development in the newspaper's history since our first international edition, printed in Frankfurt in 1979.

It is both a big financial commitment and a substantial investment in journalism, the largest single expansion of the editorial staff in the paper's history.

From its beginnings, four years ago, FT.com has sought to do more than merely replicate each morning's newspaper online. It quickly added a news archive, a comprehensive set of constantly updated share prices and a database of company financials, together with special reports and competitions.

This has paid off in a roster of 2m registered users and more than 1m pages delivered each day. But our ability to expand was hampered by first-generation technology and limited resources. Meanwhile, competition was growing, not just from other newspapers but also from the web offerings of television channels and - above all - from purpose-built sites such as Yahoo! that provided tools for users to make sense of the web and manage their lives.

Although FT.com shows up in the Hot100 rankings of internet use as the world's most frequently visited business information web site based on a newspaper, we realised this was not enough. We were in the top 10, but ahead were US-based sites - born on the web, or grown from broadcasting roots.

So, just under a year ago, Michael Foster, FT.com's newly appointed managing director, drew up an ambitious plan. He decided the site should whole-heartedly embrace the ethos of free, advertiser-supported information, rather than heading towards a subscription model.

FT.com would expand to compete directly with the sites taking the lion's share of internet traffic - "portals" such as Yahoo! that helped users find their way around the web. It would extend its content and power through partnerships with other information providers, giving the site a much broader range of content and services than traditional newspaper models.

In the months it has taken to transform our technology to achieve this, FT.com has not merely been broadened into a global business portal, it has also been deepened in its mission of reporting on and explaining the world. The site has seven channels covering everything from business news to leisure, and the best web tools available.

From the point of view of tradition, the most important channels are News & Analysis, and Markets & Portfolio. They draw directly on the newspaper's established strengths, in reporting, analysis and access to data.

And here the new site breaks ground, with the full integration of the newsroom that produces two versions of the Financial Times: that available on paper, and that on the web. In this way, we will ensure that the intellectual engine of the journalistic team is applied as fully to the web as to the newspaper.

New reporters have joined existing teams in London, New York and Hong Kong, sharing the daily cycle with those whose priority is to write for the newspaper. They have the same business cards, the same codes of ethics and the same standards as their colleagues.

Although news on the web site will be constantly refreshed around the clock, it will not be driven by the restless impulse of a news agency, where speed counts above all. The most significant difference between the newspaper and the web site - apart from the death of the once-a-day cycle - will be the addition of new formats, reflecting the difference between paper screen.

For example, users will be able to store www.ft.com/aerospace or www.ft.com/energy as bookmarks, to come back many times a day to an updated page containing the most important news stories for the relevant industry. Each story, summarised in concise fashion, will be accompanied by a longer version for readers who want more. There will also be cross references to background articles, archive material, relevant documents elsewhere on the web, and discussion forums.

In launching the new FT.com, we seek to compete not just with local rivals, and not just with sites that have their origins in print. We also seek to compete with innovative sites around the world.

We will know we are successful when people start thinking of the Financial Times not as a newspaper with a web site attached, but as a journalistic enterprise that operates freely across media boundaries, committed not to any one form of publication, but to accuracy, independence, and the interests of the reader.