Insight Is Infra Dig at the Financial Times : THE FINANCIAL TIMES A Centenary History <i> by David Kynaston (Viking: $29.95; 544 pp.)</i> Reviewed

The Financial Times occupies a unique position in the British newspaper world, comparable to the Wall Street Journal, its much more narrowly focused rival for journalistic command of the international bourse . Its famous pink paper, adopted as a promotional gimmick in 1893, should not be taken as any indication of deviation from orthodox anti-Socialist, free enterprise political attitudes; nor, indeed, does it show any affinity with the other pink English paper, the Sporting Life, the racing tipsters’ leading daily form-sheet.

Now 100 years old, the present paper derives from a postwar amalgamation with its slightly older rival, the Financial News, and their dual history has been diligently researched by an outsider, the economic historian David Kynaston. His book makes a distinctive (if overlong) contribution to newspaper history, well beyond the usual in-house commemoration.

Both papers were founded during a great boom period in the London stock exchange, when investment in railroad “Yankees” and gold-mining “Kaffirs” rapidly expanded the market and showed the need for trustworthy information for new investors beset by the promotional literature of unscrupulous operators.

The names of some of the most notorious swindlers of their day people the early pages, sometimes too closely involved for comfort. The founding editor of the Financial News was described by a judge as a “dishonest rogue” and “scoundrel,” but the papers both managed to achieve respectability, and The Times a special authority, from an early stage. Vigilance and independence were firmly established, and later the threat by a much-criticized issuing house to withdraw advertising could be countered with an “if your advertisement doesn’t appear in the Financial Times, people won’t know that you have withheld it, they will think we have refused to accept it.”

The same independence has been respected by the current proprietor, the publishing, financial and industrial conglomerate S. Pearson & Sons, who have kept their distance even when parts of their empire (which includes Lazards, the merchant bank) have been the subject of adverse editorial comment.

Among all the commercial intelligence of Kynaston’s presentation, one does get a good impression of differing personal style in editorial management, not least of the still rather mysterious politician Brendan Bracken, who bought the Financial News in 1928. A man of deliberately obscured origins (he was of Irish birth, but never wholly discouraged a rumor that he was his patron Winston Churchill’s son), he used his newspapers as one of the ladders by which he climbed high and fast in the Establishment; he was a legendary figure in his lifetime, and he comes over as the leading personality here.

Later, the paper’s great achievements after the amalgamation were to be masterminded by the apparently languid and dilettante Earl of Drogheda, and his tough, shy and isolated editor, Sir Gordon Newton. Both governed by lofty memoranda, Newton’s with calculated malapropisms like “Keep it tert” or his praise of a short, sharp book review as “a superb little vinaigrette.” Both, in spite of their distance, were very hard-working executives, fully aware of the high standing of their charge.

The specially authoritative position the Financial Times holds through its price tabulations, its Index, and its assessment of corporate news, makes it the city of London’s own paper, and it has worked hard to achieve equal respect from industrialists and managers as well as from financiers.

Authority, balance and weight do, however, impart a certain dullness, and even after 500 pages of judicious appraisal, Kynaston has to agree that it is in need of chutzpah. There has long been an editorial mistrust of the scoop, which might imperil the paper’s legendary accuracy; “insight” reporting, it is felt, could dignify wrongdoers by giving them publicity. In a world accustomed to insider trading, dubious arbitrage and threatened standards in the insurance market, too general and lofty a disapproval from a journal fully aware of its unique standing could be regrettable.

Kynaston shows how carefully this authority has been built up, but he also seems to feel that the Financial Times could use it to speak more strongly and more specifically ex cathedra.

He also shows the way in which it has gradually broadened its appeal from being purely a city paper. There has been an influential science column since 1948. Books, music, wine and gardening all have a fresh and influential weekly coverage, and for the non-financial reader there is much more to the paper than the arithmetical tabulations that are its raison d’etre. Problems of diversification remain, however, not least that of how to fill the Saturday issue with copy of interest to the non-expert reader, and to attract general advertising to support weekend publications.

Much of the story of the Financial Times’ last 30 years is taken up with the labor problems deeply embedded in the printing and production side of Fleet Street culture, which until recently bedeviled all London newspaper production. “Old Spanish Customs,” as they were known, based on Union practices from the hand-setting period of typography, continued to prolong overmanning, depress profits and leave Fleet Street far behind in a technological revolution well under way even in the English provinces.

Management, led by civil and reasonable men, could not take a firm enough stand against predatory union negotiators able to threaten strikes and extort bonus payments (“house extras”) for each innovation.

Collective action by the principal proprietors could not be arranged, and it took Rupert Murdoch’s pungent action in moving production of the London Times out to the regenerated former Thames docklands to break the mold. Fleet Street, now that other papers have followed, is now only a historic term in press history, and (in the words of Murdoch’s rival Robert Maxwell) “the gravy train has hit the buffers.”

The story is a highly instructive one in media history, even if it is too early to assess all the results of the migration to Wapping in 1985-86. “The Financial Times” is a beneficiary, although the stimulus given to new rivals (like the very successful, and financially authoritative, Independent) will keep it on its toes.