'Financial Times' Runs Summer School Series

By: Mark Fitzgerald Summer School is back in session at the Financial Times of London.

Each weekday during the month of August, the FT is running a full-page feature that it describes as "our 20-part series on how to get ahead of the competition." Another identifier box suggests it will "help readers brush up on their management skills."

In recent days, FT Summer School articles have focused on corporate governance, risk management and leadership traits that help companies go "from good to great."

Some of the guest writers of the features are academics, some are businesspeople and some are people staff reporters know about, FT Deputy Features Editor James Pickford said in an e-mail from London. "We find Summer School writers in all sorts of ways," he said. "They might develop a reputation on a topic, which I then get to hear about; a school might put them forward as a good writer; they might write a book, or publish research, or more general articles in management publications such as Harvard Business Review; I might meet them at a business school or staff journalists here might put me onto them. No hard-and-fast rules really."

Similarly, the topics are often a result of give and take, he said: "Sometimes I want them to write on their specialist topic; at other times I ask them to turn their hand to something they might not have tackled before because they would be likely to throw up some interesting angles on it or are particularly good writers."

This is the third year the FT has published the seasonal feature, which a spokesperson said has proved particularly popular with business schools. This year's Summer School series may be collected into a standalone publication, the spokesperson added.