Gazette reporter Sue Stuart has worked on many Financial Times surveys over the past 15 years. As part of The Royal Gazette's coverage of the survey, she examines how they are compiled.

Financial Times surveys have become renowned throughout the world for their concise and honest view of what is happening in the place or industry being surveyed. They are read and respected globally, and many people rely on them to gain an understanding of how a place or industry functions. The FT works very hard to retain that reputation and continues to put considerable resources into compiling them.

The surveys department at the FT is a separate department from the news and features departments. But journalists who write the surveys are taken from among the newspaper's hundreds of journalists around the world. The advertising is also dealt with separately from body of the paper advertising.

And one very important criteria, which ensures editorial integrity, is that the journalists writing the survey are not told who is advertising and have absolutely nothing to do with the survey's advertising.

A journalist with specialist and current knowledge in the field to be surveyed will compile a synopsis around two months before. This gives the journalists who will write it guidance and some perameters on topics to be covered. But it is up to the writers to write what they find, regardless of how it fits in or otherwise with the topic's synopsis.

A small team of journalists, selected from those with relevant knowledge or experience in the field to be surveyed, descend on the place for up to a week.

They will have prearranged their plans and schedules and will hit the ground running. It is usually an extremely busy round of interviews, days usually beginning with a breakfast meeting and not finishing until after a dinner meeting or even late night drinks or coffee meeting. They only have those few days to get as much information as they can, so there is little time to do anything else.

This usually takes place around two to three weeks before publication of the survey. The journalists then go back to their offices and start writing, making follow up calls where necessary.

At this point the advertising obtained for the survey does impinge on the journalists' function. The size, number of pages, of the survey depends on the advertising revenue obtained and they will be anything from four pages up.

Bermuda's is ten pages this year so the advertising team obviously did well.

If it is to be small the journalists may be told to keep the articles, or some of them, short (around 500 words) and vice versa for large. In some cases, as happened with Bermuda, there is so much advertising that the surveys' editor will commission extra articles. This is when it is vital that the journalists have gathered a lot of information on their site visit, so that they can come up with extra copy.

The articles are submitted to the surveys department, edited and any changes checked with the journalist (usually) and then off the whole thing goes for publication. For the journalists there is nothing more to do other than wait with fingers crossed, hoping it will go through the system all right -- also hoping that any errors made during publication will not be too dreadful.

BUSINESS BUC