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Good news: Someone is actually hiring, and (surprise!) it's a member of the flailing business press.

Just a few days after announcing the closure of its Boston bureau, The Wall Street Journal is looking to hire about a dozen local reporters to cover city beats like the courthouses and city hall, The New York Times revealed today.

All of this seems to be part of Rupert Murdoch's grand scheme to make the Journal more of a general interest paper in order to compete directly with the Times. But no matter what the goal, the bottom line is there are about 12 job openings in New York City right now, and that is the best news we've heard all week.

Wall Street Journal To Hire About a Dozen Reporters To Cover Local News in New York --New York Times

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Today, we received a formal announcement from The Financial Times regarding the return of columnist Martin Lukes. Announced the salmon-colored paper:

"On Thursday 5th November Martin Lukes, iconic leader, trendsetter, multiple award winner and former CEO of Atlanta-based a-b glöbâl, returns to the Financial Times with a new weekly print and online column."

According to the announcement, Lukes is currently serving the rest of his sentence for insider trading but will write his column from inside the prison, relaying information through his wife, Sherril. A financial paper publishing a column from a convicted white collar criminal while he's still behind bars would be an amazing story, if Lukes himself wasn't a complete fabrication.

Lukes, and the book he penned called Who Moved my BlackBerry?, are creations of FT writer Lucy Kellaway. It's sort of like Newsweek's Dan Lyon's creation of Fake Steve Jobs, without the very obvious satirical title.

Although Lukes stopped writing his original FT column after being arrested for insider trading in 2007, it seems like Kellaway has finally decided to resurrect the character. Could it have something to do with the fact that business journalism could use a laugh right now or is the FT poking fun at white collar criminals like Conrad Black writing for pubs like The Daily Beast from prison?

The full release about Lukes, after the jump.

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One surprising reaction to The New York Times' recent announcement that it plans to cut 100 newsroom staffers through buyouts and, if necessary, layoffs is some readers' willingness to pay for the paper's content online in order to save jobs and maintain its quality.

Over the weekend, the Times' public editor Clark Hoyt discussed the paper's staff cutting plans, seeking answers from executive editor Bill Keller. Acknowledging that some have offered a pay wall as a possible solution to the layoff plans, Keller said, "It's a much tougher, more complicated decision than it seems to all the armchair experts. There is no clear consensus on the right way to go."

Explained Hoyt:

"At stake are millions of dollars from online advertisers who want the largest possible number of readers. Putting up any kind of pay wall has the potential to drive away readers and some of those dollars."

Still, Keller revealed a decision on how the paper will proceed with a pay wall is a few weeks away. Unfortunately, it looks like 100 people will be losing their jobs before a pay model can be unveiled. The realities of the media today is that any income that will come from a paid online content won't be able to save jobs -- at least right away.

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Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal announced that it was closing its Boston bureau.

"That there has been truly great reporting under the generalship of Gary Putka out of Boston over many, many years is not in doubt," Journal managing editor Robert Thomson said in a memo yesterday. "But we remain in the midst of a profound downturn in advertising revenue and thus must think the unthinkable."

The bureau's contributions to the business paper, and journalism, won't be quickly forgotten. The bureau contributed many long-form investigative pieces for the business paper and covered Boston-based mutual-fund firms, education and other local industries like biotechnology. And several reporters based there were part of team that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for article about stock-option backdating.

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