2010 has been a banner year for the Financial Times.  The London-based business paper introduced their iPad app in May and is steadily approaching one million subscribers with a paywall model that has kept both profits and circulation numbers high.  Now FT is closing out the year by announcing that they will offer customers with a corporate license access to their newspaper through Bloomberg Professional service.

Nearly 300,000 Bloomberg subscribers will be able to connect with FT and, according to a company statement, over 900 corporate customers have already signed up through several third party providers.  Although only premium or corporate members are granted unlimited access to FT content, Bloomberg Professional users that do not have an FT license will be able to view headlines for articles that link directly to the Financial Times main page.  FT managing director B2B Caspar de Bono notes that the partnership with Bloomberg adds another platform to reach FT‘s professional reader base:

This agreement opens up another large and hugely significant channel to the FT and means that the mutual customers of the FT and the Bloomberg Professional service will have instant access to the FT’s news and analysis to help them make more informed decisions.  The FT aims to make its content available wherever our customers choose to access it, whether that’s in print, on a mobile or via the Bloomberg Professional service.

The Financial Times introduced the world to their iPad application in May.  Less than six months and 400,000 subscribers later, the app has brought in over one million British pounds or roughly $1.6 million for those of you that do not have a universal currency converter on hand. 

At today’s MediaGuardian Changing Advertising Summit in London, FT‘s global commercial director, Ben Hughes, explained the methods behind the paper’s digital success:

“My job is to make the FT brand sweat.  Print [advertising] isn’t dead but media owners are just having to find new ways to put [different models] together.”

Hughes also noted that traditional print advertising has taken a backseat to digital ventures and generates only 40% of FT‘s total revenue.  The business newspaper’s iPad app accounts for 10% of FT‘s new digital subscriptions.

The New York Times announcement yesterday about plans to launch a pay wall model on its Web site next year, wasn’t just a big story for the media — it was also a big story for New York City.

Appropriately enough, New York’s media was on the case, with NY1 and others reporting the breaking news.

“The New York Times will make you pay,” started Keith Kelly‘s story in The New York Post today, “Times online pinch”. “The Times announced yesterday that it will end its free-for-all online service and start charging to read complete articles.”

New York-based Henry Blodget, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Business Insider even sounded off, calling it “the right move.”

And New York magazine’s Daily Intel blog, which first published word of the Times metered pay wall plans, said the announcement had nothing to do with Apple’s expected announcement of its new tablet device next week, as rumored. “[D]espite the fevered speculation of just what the Apple device might be, publishers like the Times are taking a revised view about the tablet’s potential to reinvent their digital businesses,” reporter Gabriel Sherman said.

Sherman also quizzed Rob Grimshaw, of the Financial Times to see what the Times metering system might look like.

Read more: Times online pinch –New York Post

Why the Times Is Wary of an Apple Tablet Deal — New York magazine

So Blodget, What Do You Think Of This Paywall Decision By The New York Times? –Business Insider

Previously: NYTimes.com Pay Wall: Media CEOs, Editors And Bloggers Weigh In

Yesterday, the big news in the magazine industry was McGraw-Hill‘s decision to put BusinessWeek up for sale. Bloomberg broke the story in the morning, and by the afternoon BusinessWeek‘s own media reporter, Jon Fine, had weighed in.

According to Fine, “McGraw-Hill had held discussions earlier this year with Bloomberg regarding a sale of BusinessWeek,” but the newswire passed. Then Bloomberg became the first news organization to report the sale.

Today, the Financial Times reported that the sale of BusinessWeek might only fetch $1 for McGraw-Hill and weighed the possible buyers.

“Industry members and bankers said it was unlikely that Time Warner’s Time Inc., publisher of Fortune, or Forbes would bid for a competitor while facing similar challenges themselves,” FT said. “Among the few groups investing in print media, bankers pointed to Bloomberg, which has recruited new management for an aggressive expansion of its financial magazine, Bloomberg Markets, and Bonnier, which has become a top-10 U.S. publisher through acquisitions…a Bonnier spokesman said it had always favored niche acquisitions. A spokesman for News Corp., owner of the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, said it was not interested in BusinessWeek.”

As the Journal pointed out in its story about the possible sale today, it is not an easy market for business magazines right now. So who, if anyone, is going to step up and buy a flagging BusinessWeek?

Earlier: BusinessWeek On The Block?

Next week, mediabistro will be hosting a panel that will discuss how social media is changing the face of journalism, whether an online business model is on the horizon and what that business model may look like.

We suspect this panel, moderated by BusinessWeek media columnist Jon Fine, will be similar to last week’s Reuters <a href="panel or this week’s Gotham Media panel about the media in crisis. However, while Reuters and Gotham Media offered insight from “old media” editors like Lawrence Ingrassia from The New York Times, the Financial Times‘ Chrystia Freeland and Andrew Edgecliff-Johnson and Air America‘s Bennett Zier, next week’s panel will have a distinctive point of view from panelists with vast online experience including NYU journalism professor and blogger Jay Rosen, Mediaite.com Editor at Large Rachel Sklar, blogger Maeghan Carberry and former Star-Ledger staffer Matt Romanoski, who helped found NewJerseyNewsroom.com.

In the hopes of learning a little bit more about what this panel will focus on, we picked moderator Fine’s brain for a bit. “There isn’t an answer,” Fine said of the ever elusive online business model question for media companies. “But if you can get people to pay for something you’re in good shape.”

Expect panelists to wrestle with this conundrum, offer suggestions and advice and describe their own experiences. It all goes down July 16.

(Photo via flickr)

From left: Dezenhall, Klein, Edgecliff-Johnson, Heyward and Zier talk the future of media

Another day, another panel talking about why the media is in crisis and what can be done to fix it.

Today’s panel at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle hosted by Gotham Media Ventures — called “Media in Crisis: Is There A Way Out? — brought us no closer to a solution, but was more focused on particular problems and solutions than some of the other panels we have been to recently.

Moderated by Eric Dezenhall, founder of crisis management firm Dezenhall Resources, the panel included Financial Times Media Editor Andrew Edgecliff-Johnson, Newspaper National Network CEO Jason Klein, Air America CEO Bennett Zier and Andrew Heyward, senior advisor at MarketSpace LLC and former president of CBS News.

The panelists focused in on the main problems that are plaguing journalism today: the changing advertising market, media bias versus niche markets and rapidly changing technology.

Bias and emerging niche markets particularly fascinated the panelists, who all agreed that there is a future for niche publications — although they mourned the loss of unbiased news coverage and local reporting of large local newspapers.

“News has become a spectator sport,” Zier said, noting that every outlet strives to be the “est” — as in “youngest, oldest, blackest, hippest.” And that’s not a bad thing. “There is so much noise right now, you absolutely have to differentiate yourself,” he added.

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After wrapping up two days of the Personal Democracy Forum yesterday, we ran over to a panel hosted by Reuters and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers discussing the future of journalism in a multimedia world.

Moderated by Reuters’ global managing editor Betty Wong, the panel included New York Times business and financial editor Lawrence Ingrassia, a very pregnant Financial Times U.S. managing editor Chrystia Freeland, Columbia Journalism School dean Sree Sreenivasan and mediabistro.com founder Laurel Touby.

Wong opened up the conversation by asking the panelists how media companies can make the best of all their resources, in order to take advantage of the many different platforms available.

“We all have to ask ourselves, ‘What do our readers really want?’” Freeland said. She added that journalists are entrepreneurial at heart and want to create a brand and a Web presence for themselves, but it’s up to the editors and management to decide what’s best for the news organization. “The turning point came when journalists realized that it is in their personal interest to have a Web presence,” she said. “Journalists became journalists to become famous and make a name for themselves.”

Photo: Thomson Reuters Markets CEO Devin Wenig (right) introduces the panel featuring (from left) Touby, Sreenivasan, Freeland and Ingrassia

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Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson sent two memos to staff today announcing the appointments of two top editors at the U.S. and Asia editions of the financial paper.

Deborah Brewster, formerly of the Financial Times will take the position of deputy managing editor of the Journal early next month, Thomson said.

“She played a key role in the rapid expansion of the US Edition of the Financial Times, where she was instrumental in developing FT.com, created the successful Global Investing section, and [was] largely responsible for ensuring that the FT had a talented and diverse staff,” Thomson added.

Brewster will be in charge of training and hiring programs for the Journal and will oversee the graphics department. Over the course of her 20-year business journalism career she worked for Australian pubs The Australian and The Age before joining FT in 1999.

Thomson today also announced the appointment of Almar Latour as editor-in-chief, Asia, for the Journal. Latour has a long history with the paper and most recently worked with deputy managing editor Alan Murray to develop WSJ.com, Thomson said.

In his new role, Latour will over see the print version of the Journal in Asia (which recently expanded to India) and work on expanding the paper’s digital presence there. Since the Journal has made it a priority to increase its reach in the growing Asian market, Latour will have his work cut out for him.

“Our Chinese-language site has quadrupled its audience over the past 18 months, while our Japanese-language site is due to be launched in the autumn and we are in the midst of developing new editorial content for mobile phones in India,” Thomson explained.

Full memos after the jump

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Reuters is filling out its commentary team by bringing on three new columnists — Agnes Crane, Matthew Goldstein and Christopher Swann.

Crane, formerly an editor at Dow Jones Newswires, led a team covering the credit markets and debt instruments.

Wall Street reporter Goldstein is joining Reuters from Businessweek, where he launched the magazine’s Unstructured Finance blog. He has also previously worked at TheStreet.com, SmartMoney.com, Crain’s New York Business and The New York Law Journal.

Swann previously covered the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the U.S. Treasury for Bloomberg News, and worked for the Financial Times for nine years before that.

The three columnists will be joining Reuters later this month and early next month.

Full release after the jump.

Earlier: Reuters Appoints International Commentary Editor

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Well, one supposes it’s better than bankruptcy (also, a corruption scandal!). The Financial Times is reporting that the New York Times Co. is “considering potential asset sales and is in discussions with lenders as it prepares for one of the ‘most challenging years’ in its history.” These asset sales, mind you, do not include the Times building, which the company announced on Monday it would be borrowing against. Nor do they include all the Barack Obama election issues which gave the paper a bump last month. Times Co. chief executive Janet Robinson isn’t giving details but there is speculation that the company could be looking to offload its “New England newspapers — including the Boston Globe — and its 17 per cent stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team.” However(!) Robinson does stress that the company is NOT for sale (you know, until it is).

At the UBS conference yesterday Jeff Bercovici reports that the Times execs were coming under some heavy questioning, particularly about the Times much-delayed decision to cut dividends. Why so late and why not more?

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