Gillian Tett and the Financial Times

Peter Lauria of The Daily Beast writes about the Financial Times’ growing influence in the United States and the rise of its U.S. editor, Gillian Tett.

Lauria writes, “The horrible financial climate has been great for Tett, whose authoritative voice has given the FT the authoritative voice documentating the global economic meltdown, while her camera-ready looks have made her the go-to journalist for television outlets across the globe. In ascending to the highest editorial position at the Financial Times, Tett has managed to make the august, salmon-hued broadsheet two things never identified with it before: trendy and sexy.

“‘The FT has become a sort of status symbol, people want to show off that they read it,’ says Reed Phillips, managing partner of boutique media advisory firm DeSilva & Phillips. ‘They’d rather leave the FT out on the coffee table than The Wall Street Journal.’

“‘Status symbol’ isn’t a word recently associated with the newspaper industry, but the FT has been an anomaly. Long thought of as a British newspaper, the FT has quadrupled its circulation in the U.S. to 137,000 and now has more readers stateside than it does in the U.K. (worldwide circulation: 401,000). Meanwhile, its website boasts 2 million registered users, and 126,000 people pay for subscription services—digital products accounted for 73 percent of the FT Group’s revenue last year, while advertising only accounted for 19 percent, a near reversal from a decade ago that underscores a desire among all media organizations to be less reliant on advertising.”

Read more here.