Citing “three people close to Mr. Bloomberg,” the Times reports that Bloomberg — along with Reuters, which Wolff called as well — is weighing the pros and cons of buying the FT. Apparently Bloomberg has been caught appreciating the paper and its layout quite a few times, and in typical Bloomberg fashion, even joked about how he’s one of the few people who would even consider purchasing a newspaper in today’s digitally-focused world:

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Correction:

In a post last week about the potential sale of The Financial Times, FishbowlNY mistakenly described the FT as simply “pink.” As The New York Times notes, this was a gross mischaracterization.

The FT’s website insists that the paper is not just pink, it is “salmon pink.” And even if we had called it that — according to someone who works at a real, actual place called the Pantone Color Institute — we would have still been wrong. The FT, said the Pantone executive, is “bisque,” which is “a warm, welcoming, nurturing color.”

From now on FishbowlNY will refer to the FT as salmon pink; or if we’re sort of hungry, bisque. We apologize for the inaccuracy in the last post.

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The working theory is that Pearson is mostly focused on its education business, and could use the capital gained by selling off the FT (and Penguin Books) to acquire additional education-centric assets and build new products. Scardino has long been seen as the only stumbling block to a FT sale. She once she said that the paper would only be sold “over my dead body.” Something tells us a deal like that would be highly unethical.

Experts say that the FT could fetch as much as $1 billion, so who would line up to take that on? The usual suspects: Bloomberg LP, News Corporation and Reuters.

Also, anyone else who likes pink and has loads of cash. We’re looking at you, Paris Hilton.

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According to the FT, it gathered a big audience by sticking to what it does best — covering financial news in a smart, interesting way.  ”Part of the social media team’s strategy has also been to play up to the highly visual nature of the platform and rich-media content such as videos, images and infographics,” reads a release from the FT.

That doesn’t sound groundbreaking, but it’s working. One million followers is certainly remarkable, especially considering the lack of user interaction on Google+.

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Michael Wolff

Wolff explains that gaining the paper would make sense for either company:

It is certainly true that neither Bloomberg nor Thomson Reuters need a newspaper — and yet it is true, too, that it could change the game were one of them to get a major financial news organ (so much so that each would probably do what is necessary to try to prevent the other from getting one — vastly enhancing the value of both the FT and WSJ). Indeed, while neither Pearson nor News Corp are ever going to turn the FT or WSJ into significant earners, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters, with their back-end financial information resources, might be able to build a powerful and profitable financial news front end.

He does concede that because the talks are — according to his source — “at an informal level of discussion,” any deal might be far off.

UPDATE:
A Pearson spokesperson emailed us and denied the rumors. ”The FT is a very valued and valuable part of Pearson,” wrote the spokesperson. “It is not for sale.”

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Talking Biz News says that Guerrera will replace Ken Brown, the Journal’s current Money & Investing Editor, who is moving to Asia to bolster the paper’s Asian edition.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Yesterday we reported on MediaNews‘ trial of Steve Brill‘s JournalismOnline pay wall platform Press+, which seeks a way for writers to maybe one day get paid for Internet reporting. Today, new details have emerged about the experiment, which will launch on two of MediaNews newspaper websites — York Daily Records and the Enterprise-Record — and which VP for content development Howard Saltz has already compared to The Financial Times pay model. So which content will we be coughing it up for in the future?

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Is this the turning of the content tide? For months now we’ve been looking forward to seeing Steve Brill‘s model for regulating content with his new company JournalismOnline, which will be using a platform called Press+ to standardize pay walls for websites. We have yet to see JO work in practice, but other media companies are already jumping on the Press+ bandwagon, most recently the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania and the Enterprise-Record in California, which should be ready for the content provider come April or May, and be the first sites to test the new system. Both papers are owned by MediaNews Group, one of the largest newspaper holders in the country.

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Editor & Publisher: The Financial Times makes a number of staff appointments.

AdAge: Nielsen will combine TV and online ratings.

New York Times: Former BusinessWeek publisher McGraw-Hill today posted increased earnings for the fourth quarter.

The Business Insider: Reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos are getting color coded.

MediaPost: In search of another source of revenue, The Wall Street Journal is launching a travel agency this week.

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The most recent example of this would be The New York Times‘ announcement last week that it would be erecting a metered pay wall for its Web site next year. Other newspapers like The Financial Times and Newsday also charge for their sites, to differing levels of success.

But there’s at least one editor who still takes issue with both Murdoch and the concept of pay walls as they stand today: British newspaper The Guardian‘s editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger spoke out yesterday, slamming both the Australian media mogul and the theory behind paying for news on the Internet.

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Since then, publisher Arthur Sulzberger has made vague promises, culminating in today’s announcement of a plan to launch a metered pay model on NYTimes.com next year. It makes sense: last year saw the Times‘ hemorrhaging money (losing $35 million in the third quarter alone), and speculation that the paper wouldn’t make it to 2010.

Thankfully, Carlos Slim stepped in last year, but it still remains to be seen how the Grey Lady will make it back into the black. While alienating some readers, the metered system of content-charging that Sulzberger is planning may actually be the best compromise between giving away your product for free and going on almost total lock-down mode like the The Wall Street Journal. Under this plan, The New York Times will eventually allow you to read only a certain number of articles per month before asking you to subscribe, much like Variety or The Financial Times (although some have pointed out that the FT‘s model is looking more and more like the Journal‘s).

But even before today’s not completely unexpected announcement, media critics were chomping at the bit to react to the Times‘ possible pay plans. After the jump, a look at what some of them are saying.

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The model will be a metered plan, as predicted by New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman over the weekend. Although announced today, the plan won’t go into effect until next year, the New York Times Co. said.

The metered plan will allow users to access a certain number of articles for free before being prompted to pay for additional access, much like The Financial Times‘ current model. Subscribers to the print edition will continue to have free access.

Said publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.:

“Our new business model is designed to provide additional support for The New York Times‘ extraordinary, professional journalism. Our audiences are very loyal and we believe that our readers will pay for our award-winning digital content and services.”

Full release after the jump

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Sources tell Sherman that the Times could announced their model — which will be similar to that employed by The Financial Times — by the end of the month, although it won’t be implemented until sometime in the spring. Currently, the FT‘s pay wall allows registered readers to read 10 stories per month before prompting them to sign up for a tiered subscription model.

The Times has been promising to announce plans of a pay wall of some sort since the summer, but execs have been dragging their feet because of disagreement among leaders of the newsroom, Sherman said:

“In favor of a paid model were [executive editor Bill Keller] and managing editor Jill Abramson. [Digital chief Martin Nisenholtz] and former deputy managing editor Jon Landman, who was until recently in charge of nytimes.com, advocated for a free site.”

Although keeping the site free would draw more readers than a restricted pay site, media companies would be remiss if they didn’t try to monetize their online content in order to create a new stream of revenue. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who invested in the Times last year, might also be behind the pay wall push. The New York Post reported today that Slim made an appearance on CNBC on Friday stating that he was in favor of dumping the free Web content model.

But despite the swirling rumors, the Times is staying mum. Keller declined to comment to New York‘s Daily Intel blog and spokesperson Diane McNulty said: “We’ll announce a decision when we believe that we have crafted the best possible business approach. No details till then.”

New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers –Daily Intel

‘Slim’ Times option –New York Post

Previously: Times Keller: Within Weeks Of Decision On Pay Wall

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Other Web sites like those belonging to The Financial Times have embarked on a plan that would eventually allow users to purchase individual articles for a small fee, much like buying a song from iTunes for 99 cents instead of the whole album for $10.

Media analysts don’t necessarily agree that bringing down the price of content (even if it costs customers more money in the long run) will make potential readers take out their wallets. Jay Rosen New York University journalism professor, Bryan Keefer of The Daily Beast and Josh Benton of Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab both see the chink in pay walls’ armor as being that the majority of people just won’t pay for content in its current state, period. (Rosen actually predicted the paradoxical idea of paid-for “exclusivity” appealing to link-obsessed readers in a 2005 article for The Huffington Post.) So the people already paying for subscriptions will continue to pay, and the rest won’t be typing in their credit card information, no matter how small the fee is.

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The article boiled down to the fact that the publication has become, in Carr’s opinion, much more right-wing and conservative, especially in its D.C. bureau, following the takeover. Immediately after the piece was published, we received a comment from Robert Thompson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, who accused Carr of bringing up old rivalries between the two publications. Although it has to be mentioned that in his statement it was Thompson who rehashed old fights, by mentioning how last year Times‘ executive editor Bill Keller wrote a memo to “a prize committee” urging them to look closer at some of the Journal‘s stories before handing out awards for excellence in journalism.

And in case you thought that would be the end of it, you were wrong: now that the two print titans have each other in the crosshairs, neither is backing down. Oooh, fight!

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