A young reader got so frustrated with the FT’s news product that she built her own using Claude Code. She’s paying for a subscription, she wants personalized news, and she couldn’t figure out how to get it. (Jodie Hopperton, INMA)
- A paying FT subscriber built her own personalized news agent using Claude Code because she couldn't figure out how to use the actual product. She spent 30 minutes. News organizations have spent years.
- The piece is light on solutions but the diagnosis is sharp: active personalization exists, users don't find it, and agentic AI will route around publishers whether they're ready or not.
- The friend's suggestion, a cross-publisher feed where users pick and choose, sounds naive until you realize an AI agent will just do exactly that, with or without anyone's permission.
