Among the many interesting statements in Mayor Bloomberg's interview with New York magazine is this: "The Financial Times is not for sale."
The wire service that Mayor Bloomberg owns reported on November 6, 2012, "Pearson Plc (PSON) is planning to explore a sale of the Financial Times newspaper as the company focuses on its faster-growing education business, people with knowledge of the situation said. The company has decided to consider offers for the newspaper this year, said the people, who declined to be identified because the process is private."
The wire service that Mayor Bloomberg owns followed up on November 15, 2012, with an article headlined "Pearson CFO Freestone Won't Rule Out Sale of Financial Times."
There are several possible explanations for what appears to be a disconnect between what Mr. Bloomberg tells New York magazine and what the wire service he owns told its readers. One is that the differences are explained by the timing: The Financial Times was for sale in November 2012, or was about to be, but the owner has since changed its mind, and the paper isn't for sale now, in September 2013, or in August 2013 when Mr. Bloomberg gave the interview.
A second possibility is that the FT is for sale, and that Mayor Bloomberg is trying to buy it and wants to throw potential competing bidders off track by misleadingly claiming that the FT is not for sale. That way he can pay less for it that he would have to pay if word got out that it was for sale.
A third possibility is that the FT was never for sale, and that the Bloomberg wire service stories from back in November 2012 were just nonsense or hype, or inaccurate. If that is the case, Mayor Bloomberg may want to examine how those stories — the first of which is based on anonymous sources — came to be. Clark Hoyt, call your office.