Want to be an editor? Work for the FT first

Roy Greenslade of The Guardian in London notes that The Financial Times has trained a number of newspaper leaders, including new Wall Street Journal publisher Robert Thomson.

The paper’s chief business commentator John Gapper tried to assess why.

Greenslade wrote, “Regardless of the FT’s specific influence, ‘business journalists are increasingly being appointed to run newspapers.’ The former editor of the Sunday Telegraph was Patience Wheatcroft, a former Times business editor. One of the commenters to my posting, Waltroon, made that point too.

“Gapper rightly says that ‘in the old days of Fleet Street, editors tended to come from general news backgrounds or editorial pages… City pages were seen as backwaters.’ (In popular papers, incidentally, the majority tended to come through the sub-editorial route).

“Back to Gapper, who argues that ‘business stories have become more important and the industry has entered a period of upheaval’ [so] ‘if you are a newspaper owner looking for a journalist familiar with changes in the media and the world more generally, it is logical to seek out a business specialist.”

Read more here.