I think the author still has a point. Nobody from this "1st class newspaper" has noticed the mistake in 18 months. Their quality control does not seem to be as good as their reputation might suggest.
Even if it’s not used seriously it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. Even if it’s nostalgic or an old guy who checked the paper for 50yrs and today still likes checking on a couple of his pet stocks once in while on paper.
This was the thesis of the Emotional Design book (the follow up to famous tea kettle design book) that engineers and amateur designers often over focus purely on function and ignore emotion - they overvalue the most rational approach. For ex: programmers always want the least amount of clicks to do x, when an extra step with an info box and a button might help ease worries and anxieties and smooth the UX.
Often there is value in the pure visceral experience, sometimes emotion, or nostalgia, or pure beauty of the design. This is often what creates a great product that people become religious about. So such things can’t be dismissed out of hand simply because the value cant be reduced to going from point A to B faster/efficiently/cheaper.
What is being dismissed out of hand?
The concepts of emotional design and the accuracy of data on a financial website seem rather unrelated?
The fact FT messed up by automating it and not doing basic QA is a signal but it’s not the whole story. A few extra pages for nostalgia reasons, style, and a few hardcore fans is hardly a big burden on a product. But who knows. Maybe it is useless.
You don't want your QA to break every time a new data source is added
You can't check to see something you don't know is not there without losing a ton of flexibility
And the FT is also owned by the Nikkei now, who likely have folks who could immediately spot small mistakes relating to companies in the Nikkei 225.
So this slipping through suggests there are possibly more minor errors elsewhere.
The investigation on wirecard was great though.