FT.com’s MD has called on media commentators to stop questioning the publisher’s online business model - and urged the industry to imitate the airline sector. FT.com last year began giving readers five free articles and another 30 if they register for free; it’s increased the number of registered users but not, so far, paying subscribers.

Rob Grimshaw told SIIA’s Global Information Industry Summit at London’s Royal Garden hotel this morning: “There seems to be a prevailing view out there that there must be purity in business models on the web - that it must be all pay-for or all free - and any effort to marry the two is an offence to the purity of the web environment.”

FT.com feels like it’s still combating the rather binary “free-or-paid?” debate that was most prominently sparked by WSJ.com’s consideration of “going free”, before it eventually decided against it. Grimshaw said “many major publishers have simply caved in” to that free-or-bust paradigm: “If everything’s going to be free then a lot of it will be rubbish.” More detail at paidContent:UK...