James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times writes Wednesday about how the Financial Times has been building its circulation by, among other strategies, holding conferences and meetings.

Rainey writes, “Although it won’t reveal just how much it’s making, the 550-journalist news outlet (roughly the same staffing as the Los Angeles Times) has also profited and strengthened its high-end brand by hosting more than 50 meetings and conferences a year. They dot the globe, from Monaco to Beijing.

“The Business of Luxury Summit, now in its sixth year, has become the flagship event, and a handsome moneymaker because of tony sponsors like Jaguar and Lebua Hotels & Resorts and support from about 350 ‘delegates,’ who pay from $2,200 to $3,195 to spend two days with business icons like Diane von Furstenberg and Leonard Lauder, chairman emeritus of the Estee Lauder Cos.

“Also on the agenda this Monday and Tuesday at the Beverly Hills Hotel — Disney boss Robert Iger, Creative Artists Agency poohbah Bryan Lourd, Calvin Klein Chief Executive Tom Murry, Van Cleef & Arpels exec Nicolas Bos and Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon.”

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Dean Rotbart of TJFR and NewsBios writes Monday about Helen Thomas, the business journalist for the Financial Times, not to be confused with Helen Thomas, the former Hearst Newspapers columnist and White House correspondent who resigned last week.

Rotbart writes, “The younger Helen Thomas, who based on looks alone is well less than half the age of the elder Thomas, is a graduate of Oxford University and in 2003 was named a finalist in England’s Best New Journalist of the Year competition for her work at a business weekly, Property Week.

“This week, the younger Thomas is reporting on the likely acquisition of Bresnan Communications for $1.3 billion by Cablevision, the US cable giant controlled by the Dolan family. Last week, she wrote about well-known investor Carl Icahn and his agreement to withdraw his slate of board nominees at biotech company, Genzyme.

“According to NewsBios.com, which provides journalist dossiers and in-depth personal background information to major corporations and public relations firms, the FT’s Ms. Thomas assumed the US M&A beat earlier this year, after spending two years writing on financial services and regulation for the paper’s influential Lex column. She has also covered media and property.

“Sharing ‘twin’ bylines in the journalism world is far from unique. Often reporters who have the same first and last names differentiate themselves by including a middle name or initial, or by using a nickname or their middle name alone along with their surname.”

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Robert Andrews of PaidContent.org reports that the Financial Times parent is distancing itself from comments made earlier this week by a Pearson executive about the sun setting on print newspapers.

Andrews writes, “Today, Pearson distanced itself from Madi Solomon’s remarks, saying they were incorrect.

‘We’ve got no plans to scale back the print operations. We’ve got 23 print sites, we are opening new ones – we opened Abu Dhabi this year and are hopeful of being able to commence printing in India some time soon,’ a spokesperson told paidContent:UK.

‘The print readership is actually growing for the FT. We’re gaining on all the big reader surveys — more people are reading the FT in print than ever before. Our print revenues are showing good growth.’ The spokesperson said Pearson sees print and digital as ‘complementary, not substitutional.’

‘It’s clearly something you would monitor over time,’ Pearson’s spokesperson added. ‘If you got to a point where digital was growing extremely rapidly and print was falling very fast in a particular geographical area, that might be something you’d want to look at … on a case-by-case basis.’”

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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.