The Washington Post and Bloomberg will start a service in January to distribute a selection of their news to newspapers, Websites and other subscribers, a day after the Post ended a similar arrangement with Tribune Co's Los Angeles Times.

The service, The Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News, also will produce a business page on washingtonpost.com that includes news from the Post and Bloomberg's website, the companies said on Thursday.

The decision to start the news service comes as Bloomberg may be trying to broaden its reach beyond its base of financial clients who read its news on Bloomberg terminals.

In a sign of this, the company is the likely front-runner to buy BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill, sources familiar with the situation have told Reuters.

Bloomberg makes a limited amount of its news available to the public on its website, but restricts much of it to its clients as well as newspapers and other news sources that pick up its stories.

The Post's news also will be featured on Bloomberg's professional service, the companies said.

The news service, which begins on January 1, 2010, will feature 120 stories a day, along with photos, graphics and other story elements.

Financial terms of the service were not disclosed. Thomson Reuters Corp competes with Bloomberg in providing news and financial data.

A day earlier, the Post said it would end a 49-year-old wire service that it started with the Los Angeles Times. Washington Post Co Vice Chairman told subscribers in a memo that it made sense to proceed separately.

(Reporting by Robert MacMillan; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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