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The
Financial Times (FT) is a British international
business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper
published in London that has had a strong influence
on the financial policies of the British government.
The periodical is printed at 24 sites. Its main
rival as a daily financial newspaper is the New
York City-based Wall Street Journal, which also
publishes several international editions.
Founded
in 1888 by James Sheridan and his brother, the
Financial Times competed for many years with four
other finance-oriented newspapers, finally in
1945 absorbing the last of these, the Financial
News (founded in 1884). The FT has specialized
in reporting business and financial news while
maintaining an independent editorial outlook.
On occasion it has attacked the financial policies
of the British government. Circulation of the
FT is said to be one of the world's highest among
financial newspapers, second only to that of The
Wall Street Journal. Printed as a broadsheet on
distinctive light salmon pink paper, the FT is
the only paper in the UK providing full daily
reports on the London Stock Exchange and world
markets. According to a survey in December 2004,
45% of readers voted for the Conservative Party,
24% for the Liberal Democrats and 23% for Labour
Party.
History
The
FT was launched as the London Financial Guide
on January 9, 1888, by Horatio Bottomley, renaming
itself the Financial Times on February 13 of the
same year. Describing itself as the friend of
"The Honest Financier and the Respectable
Broker", it was initially published as a
four page journal from its headquarters in London.
The initial readership was the financial community
of the City of London. The Financial Times soon
established itself as the sober but reliable "stockbroker's
Bible" or alternatively "parish magazine
of the City", with its only rival being the
slightly older and more daring Financial News.
In 1893, the FT turned salmon pink—although
later credited as a marketing masterstroke that
made it immediately distinguishable from its competitor,
the similarly named Financial News (founded 1884)
this move was in truth inspired by economy—pink
paper being cheaper than white.[citation needed]
In 1993, the FT printed a single edition of the
paper on white stock to commemorate this change
a hundred years earlier. From their initial rivalry,
the two papers were merged by Brendan Bracken
in 1945 to form a single six-page newspaper. The
Financial Times brought with it a higher circulation,
while the Financial News provided enormous editorial
talent.
Over
the years, the newspaper grew in size, readership
and breadth of coverage. It also established a
network of correspondents in major cities around
the world, reflecting early moves in the world
economy towards globalisation.
As
cross-border trade and capital flows increased
rapidly during the 1970s, the FT began a programme
of international expansion, facilitated by developments
in technology and the growing acceptance of English
as the international language of business.
On
1 January 1979, the first FT to be printed outside
the UK rolled off the presses in Frankfurt. Since
then, with its greatly increased international
coverage, the FT has become a truly global business
newspaper, printed in 23 locations worldwide,
with three international editions to serve the
needs of its readers in the UK, Continental Europe,
the U.S. and Asia.
The
European edition is distributed in Continental
Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. It is printed
Monday to Saturday at five strategically located
print centres across Europe. Thanks to its extensive
network of correspondents reporting from all the
political and commercial nerve centres of Europe,
the FT is widely regarded to be the premier news
source involving the European Union, the Euro,
and European corporate affairs.
On
13 May 1995 the Financial Times group made its
first foray into the online world with the launch
of the first version of FT.com which was the result
of internal development effort. This edition provided
a high level summary of news stories from around
the globe and was supplemented in February 1996
with the launch of stock prices followed in Spring
1996 by the second generation site. The site was
advertising funded and contributed to the development
of the emerging online advertising market in the
UK in the late 1990s. Between 1997 and 2000 the
site underwent several revamps and changes of
strategy as both the FT Group and Pearson reacted
to the rapidly changing online marketplace. FT.com
is now one of the few UK news sites successfully
operating a subscription model for content.
In
1997, the FT launched the U.S. edition, which
is now printed in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles,
San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Orlando and Washington,
D.C., although the newspaper was first printed
in the United States outside of New York City
in 1985. In March 2006, the FT's U.S. circulation
was 137,845.
In
September 1998, the FT became the first UK-based
newspaper to sell more copies internationally
than within the UK. Worldwide circulation stands
at 432,548 (Source: ABC July 2006), with global
readership estimated at over 1.6 million people
in more than 140 countries.
Since
2000, the FT publishes a German language edition,
Financial Times Deutschland, with its own news
coverage. Its circulation in 2003 was approximately
90,000.
The
current editor of the FT is Lionel Barber, who
took over from Andrew Gowers in the autumn of
2005, who reportedly left over strategic differences.
On
April 23, 2007, following in the wake of other
notable newspaper redesigns such as the January
2007 Wall Street Journal revamp, the FT also relaunched
the paper, complete with a new typeface, new labelling,
but with no reduction in paper size (unlike with
the recent redesigns of the Wall Street Journal
and the New York Times). This redesign has been
billed by some as the “most dramatic revamp
[of the FT] in a generation” and, in addition
to the typeface changes, includes the addition
of more panels in the news pages, more first page
feature content in the “Companies and Markets”
section, and more “squeezed” sports
content, to allow for an extra foreign news page.
FT editor Barber notes that the changes are “evolutionary
and will provide extra news, deeper analysis and
comment. By improving the navigation of the newspaper,
we're aiming to help our busy readers get more
out of the paper so that they understand that
the Financial Times is not only as an informative
and entertaining read, but also as an essential
business tool” and he dubs the redesigned
paper as being a “sharper” FT. Some
subtle changes include the reintroduction, above
the leaders, of the FT's original 1888 motto,
“Without fear and without favour”
and more signposts to FT.com. To coincide with
the redesign, Pearson PLC announced a new advertising
campaign centred around the tag-line “We
Live in Financial Times”. The FT redesign
was handled by and was the first major project
for design firm Shakeup Media and young American
designer Ryan Bowman
Content
The
Financial Times reports extensively on business
and features extensive share and financial product
listings. It also has a sizeable network of international
reporters – about 110 of its 475 journalists
are based outside the UK. The FT is usually in
two sections, the first section covers national
and international news, while the second section
covers company and markets news.
How
to Spend It
How
to Spend It magazine is a monthly magazine that
is usually published with the Financial Times
Weekend Edition. The glossy large magazine has
won the hearts of many Weekend Edition subscribers,
with its high detail on the latest in the glitz
and glamour of the high-life. Its articles concern
mostly high-quality products (e.g., yachts, mansions,
apartments, designs, horlogerie, haute couture,
automobiles), as well as fashion advice and columns
by important individuals in the arts, gardening,
food, and hotel and travel industries. It has
regularly themed issues, such as "Travelling
Unravelled", "A Passion for Fashion",
"Superior Interiors", and its annual
"Christmas Unwrapped". How to Spend
It has won numerous prizes for being the best
newspaper supplement of the year.
Opinions
The
Financial Times is normally seen politically as
centrist, although to the left of its principal
competitor, The Wall Street Journal. It advocates
free markets and is generally in favour of globalisation.
During the 1980s it supported Margaret Thatcher
and Ronald Reagan's monetarist policies. However,
it has recently seemed to have aligned itself
with Labour in the UK. It also has been quite
supportive, until recently, of Gordon Brown, the
current British Prime Minister. FT editorials
have tended to be pro-European Union, though often
taking a critical view. Several members of British
far-left groups, however, do work for the paper,
and it is popular among the left (Noam Chomsky
has said that it is "the only paper that
tells the truth").
The Lex column
The
Lex column is a daily feature on the back page
of the first section. It features analyses and
opinions covering a range of business and financial
topics and is global in scope. The FT calls Lex
its agenda-setting column. The column first appeared
on Monday, October 1, 1945. The origin of the
name of the column remains uncertain. It was conceived
by Hargreaves Parkinson who originally conceived
it for the Financial News in the 1930s and took
it to the Financial Times when the two papers
merged.
Ownership and related products
FT
Knowledge is an associated company, through Pearson
PLC, which offers educational products and services
to a variety of customers. FT Knowledge has offered
the "Introducing the City" course (which
is a series of Wednesday night lectures/seminars,
as well as weekend events) during the Autumn and
Spring since 2000.
FT
Predict is a prediction market contest the Financial
Times is hosting that allows users to buy and
sell contracts based on future financial, political,
and news-driven events by spending fictional Financial
Times Dollars (FT$). Based on the assumptions
displayed in James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of
Crowds, this contest allows people to use prediction
markets to observe future occurrences while competing
for weekly and monthly prizes.
Financial
Times Group includes the Financial Times, FT.com,
a 50% shareholding in The Economist, Interactive
Data Corporation (a market data provider and the
owner of eSignal), Mergermarket (an online intelligence
reporting family) and numerous joint ventures
including Vedomosti in Russia. In addition, the
FT Group has a unit called FT Business which is
a provider of specialist information on retail,
personal and institutional finance segments. It
is a publisher in the UK of Investors Chronicle
(a personal finance magazine), The Banker, Money
Management and Financial Adviser (a publication
targeted at professional advisers). The Financial
Times Group has recently announced the acquisition
of Money Media (an online news and commentary
site for the industry) and Exec-Appointments (an
online recruitment specialist site for the executive
jobs market). The FT Group also has a 13.85% stake
in Business Standard Ltd of India, the publisher
of the Business Standard.
The
Financial Times also ran a business related game
called "In the Pink" (a phrase meaning
"in good health", also a reference to
the colour of the newspaper and to the phrase
"in the red" meaning to be making a
loss). The player is put in the virtual role of
Chief Executive and the goal is to have the highest
profit when the game closes. The winner of the
game (the player who makes the highest profit)
will receive a real monetary prize of £10,000.
The game ran from 1 May to 28 June 2006.
People
* Lionel Barber (Editor)
* Richard Tomkins (Consumer Industries Editor)
* Lucy Kellaway (Management Columnist)
* Tim Harford (Dear Economist)
* Gideon Rachman (Chief International Affairs
Columnist)
* Martin Wolf (Chief Economics Commentator)
* Jurek Martin (Columnist and former Washington
Bureau Chief)
In
July 2006, the FT announced a "New Newsroom"
project to integrate the newspaper more closely
with FT.com. At the same time it announced plans
to cut the editorial staff from 525 to 475. In
August, it announced that all the required job
cuts had been achieved through voluntary layoffs.
A
number of former FT journalists have gone on to
high-profile jobs in journalism, politics and
business. Robert Thomson, previously the paper's
US managing editor, was the editor of The Times
and is now the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
Will Lewis, a former New York correspondent and
News Editor for the FT, is the current editor
of the Daily Telegraph. Dominic Lawson went on
to become editor of the Sunday Telegraph until
he was sacked in 2005. Andrew Adonis, a former
education correspondent, became an adviser on
education to Tony Blair, who was the British prime
minister, and was given a job as an education
minister and a seat in the House of Lords after
the 2005 election. Ed Balls became chief economic
adviser to the Treasury, working closely with
Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer
(or finance minister) before being elected as
a Member of Parliament in 2005, and has been Secretary
of State for Children, Schools and Families since
July 2007. Bernard Gray, a former defence correspondent
and Lex columnist, was chief executive of publishing
company CMP before becoming chief executive of
TSL Education, publisher of the Times Educational
Supplement. David Jones, at one time the FT Night
Editor, then became Head of IT. He was a key figure
in the newspapers transformation from hot metal
to electronic composition and then onto full-page
pagination in the 1990s. He went onto become Head
of Technology for the Trinity Mirror Group.
Sir
Geoffrey Owen was Editor, Financial Times, 1981-1990.
After he joined the London School of Economics
– Centre for Economic Performance (CEP)
as Director of Business Policy in 1991 and was
appointed Senior Fellow, Institute of Management,
in 1997. He continues his work there. During his
tenure at the FT he had to deal with rapid technological
change and issues related to it, for example,
repetitive strain injury (RSI) issue which affected
dozens of FT journalists, reporters and staff
in the late 1980s. (Credit:
Wikipedia).
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