Michael Wolff writes on USA Today about Bloomberg’s interest in The Financial Times.

Wolff writes, “As it happens, Bloomberg’s interest in the FT was sparked by his interest in the New York Times. Rupert Murdoch, a great purveyor of media gossip, ever-eager to cause trouble for his nemesis, the Times, started to spread the rumor in 2008 that Bloomberg might be after the paper. Bloomberg, thinking his second term as mayor would be his last, suddenly found his interest piqued by the rumor. After concluding that the voting-structure of the Times would make an acquisition improbable, Bloomberg asked the follow-up question: ‘What about the FT?’

“Four years of conscientious pursuit later, the FT appears to be available. The Times seems ever-more available, too — and on a fortuitous timetable. While the Times has sold enough assets to keep it afloat in the short term, its likely decline in advertising revenue will put it in inevitable peril again, probably right around the time Bloomberg leaves office.

“Michael Bloomberg is practically a central-casting savior for the Times. There may not be a man so rich, so middle-of-the-road, so of New York, so of the newspaper generation (wealthy enough to support a few more generations of quality newspapers) as him. He’s a plausible protector, perhaps the only plausible one.

“The FT, The New York Times, the Economist — and there is also a bit of talk about adding The Times in London, Murdoch’s money-losing prestige paper there — could become a new Anglo-New York, business-centric, ever-moderate, quasi public-interest entity underwritten by Bloomberg.

“There are certainly worse fates for each of these publications, and it’s doubtful that Bloomberg could build himself a greater monument or more fitting office to go to every day.”

Read more here.

Kevin Roose of New York magazine writes about three things that Bloomberg L.P. could do with The Financial Times if it acquired the business newspaper, as has been speculated.

Here is one of them:

Bloomberg may not want the FT to contain more long-form journalism. He apparently considers short, snappy stories an asset, not a liability. But he already has a news organization that excels at deal scoops and other to-the-point business stories, and he’s set up to deliver them instantly to trading floors around the world. And he already has a buzzy, general-audience magazine. The obvious hole is something that would be more technical than Businessweek but have the wider distribution of a general-audience publication. Making Bloomberg Markets the FT‘s long-form arm could bolster the paper’s credibility among the Wall Street crowd with minimal hassle.

Read the other two here.

Felix Salmon of Reuters ponders Monday whether acquiring the Financial Times or LinkedIn would be better for Bloomberg.

Salmon writes, “The purchase of the FT would basically be a soft-power move. Bloomberg has a stated aim of becoming ‘the world’s most influential news organization’, and the FT would be a helpful fill-in acquisition on the road to that goal. Bloomberg’s influence started in the financial markets, but the company has become more ambitious than that, so it’s investing other ways of reaching important people who might not have any need or desire to spend $20,000 a year on a Bloomberg terminal. And the investment in news outside the Bloomberg wire is paying off: Bloomberg TV got the first Obama interview after the election, for instance, while Bloomberg Businessweek had that juicy interview with Tim Cook.

“Still, the FT is a news product, which would fit within the broader Bloomberg News operation, and wouldn’t really alter the mission or the economics of the company as a whole. Bloomberg makes its money selling terminals to Wall Street, and it sells those terminals as a one-stop shop for everything you need, from the Lebanese yield curve to the flight schedule between Rio de Janeiro and Santiago de Chile. One of the things that Bloomberg subscribers want is high-quality news, and thus was Bloomberg News born: its first job is always to give the terminal subscribers the news they’re demanding.

“Buying LinkedIn, by contrast, would involve moving far beyond the terminal and into a much bigger world. Bloomberg’s business has — somewhat amazingly — not yet been disrupted by the internet. To the contrary, Bloomberg has been able to piggyback on the bandwidth revolution, and can now sell terminals in Riyadh as easily as it can in London. But there’s a limit to how many people are willing and able to spend $20,000 a year on an information terminal, especially given how much richness of information can be found on the internet for free. And Bloomberg is running up against that limit. Which means that the company is faced with a choice: either continue to reap the spectacular dividends from the existing franchise, or else try and grow, somehow, beyond the confines of the terminal.

“If Bloomberg opts for growth (and there’s no reason why it should, given that it’s not a public company), then it’s easy to see why LinkedIn could be a very smart way of getting there.”

Read more here.

Amy Chozick and Michael Barbaro of The New York Times write Sunday about how Bloomberg LP is considering purchasing The Financial Times Group.

Chozick and Barbaro write, “Mr. Bloomberg has long adored The Economist, and his affinity for the paper, at least as a reader, has deepened lately. Its bisque-colored pages, once rarely seen in the thick stack of newspapers Mr. Bloomberg carries under his arm all day, have become a mainstay. Friends say he favors its generally short, punchy and to-the-point articles, which match his temperament.

“In October, Mr. Bloomberg visited the London headquarters of The Financial Times, a few blocks away from Bloomberg L.P.’s giant new London complex, which is still under construction. When an editor asked if he would buy the paper, Mr. Bloomberg replied, ‘I buy it every day.’

“He has spoken openly with friends and aides about the potential benefits and pitfalls of making such a costly acquisition in an industry he admires deeply as a reader but sneers at as a businessman, these same people said. And he has recently taken to rattling off circulation figures and ‘penetration’ rates for the paper.”

Read more here.