Revolutionizing business coverage in Britain

There’s a new newspaper in Britain called City AM for the movers and shakers in the business world, according to this Press Gazette article about editor David Parsley.

Parsley is critical of the Financial Times, which is the main financial paper in England and has a strong presence in the United States: “A criticism of the FT over the years is that it doesn’t stick business on the front and has stopped doing what it was best at, being a journal of record. It should probably go back to its principles.”

Parsley, former business editor at the Daily Express, Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday, admits that his free newspaper has a ways to go before it can fully compete with the Financial Times, noting that its website has been profitable since December 2002 and has 80,000 paying customers.

But he says his paper has an advantage in covering business stories in Britain compared to his rivals: “The FT and business sections in the nationals have never had a newspaper with such a late deadline with a night editor who can poach their stories. It’s about giving the reader as much information as possible from whatever sources are available.

“Sometimes, because of our deadlines, our sources have to be national newspapers. They also allow us to get closing prices on the stock markets; because of this we tend to cover a lot more US business stories than any other newspaper.”

Parsley envisions a time in the future when all newspapers will be free.