> Nikkei is employee-owned?! I need to look into this more!
It's a Kabushiki gaisha (株式会社).
They aren't "employee-owned" in the progressive western sense (that's actually a "Cooperative") - it's just a joint stock company similar to McKinsey where employees can partake in limited profit sharing.
The op-ed pages were pretty conservative even pre-Murdoch. The FT is a lot like the WSJ but, as someone else commented, more global in perspective and with a more centrist editorial angle. (Probably more in line with The Economist but maybe even more so.)