[3] When the editor of the Financial Times, Hargreaves Parkinson, retired due to a terminal illness in 1950, Bracken passed over the expected successor, Harold Wincott in favour of Newton.
Granted a free hand by the paper's owners, he strengthened its coverage of financial, business, and political news while broadening it to include areas such as the arts.
Sales trebled during his years as editor, as Newton transformed the Financial Times from a trade publication into an internationally respected newspaper.
In 1958, he hired Sheila Black, a former actor and FT’s first female journalist, who introduced the How to Spend It consumer goods feature in 1967, with whom he also had a long-running extramarital affair.
He took up a chairmanship of a financial company that collapsed amidst the secondary banking crisis of 1973–1975, but subsequently served with greater success on other boards.