NYT Planning To Subsume IHT Website Within; IHT Reorg
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) is still going through the throes of figuring out what to do with International Herald Tribune, and how to position it, and as part of that process, has done a reorg of IHT. According to an internal memo by executive editor Bill Keller, it now has "a new newsroom management structure, along with plans for a redesign of the IHT and a proposal to combine the IHT and NYT Web sites." The HT site is already accessible through http://iht.nytimes.com/. Recently, IHT changed its logo and added a tagline: The Global Edition of New York Times.
From the memo, about the website integration: "The global landscape for online news is highly competitive, making scale, speed and resources essential to success. Therefore we have determined that the best future online for the IHT and the NYT globally is through a joint international presence. We are proposing that this be achieved through a new co-branded international homepage and internationally focused section fronts for business, culture, sports, luxury and travel through the merger of the Web sites and operations of the IHT and NYT. This 'international edition' on NYTimes.com would carry both IHT and NYT branding and users could arrive at these pages directly either via the IHT.com URL or via NYTimes.com....Such a co-branded approach would also ensure that the IHT has an online "home" that does not compete for advertising with NYTimes.com but instead leverages its greater audience reach and more sophisticated technology."
On the digital side, it has appointed Vicki Shannon as Editor, Digital News: "In her new role as editor, digital news, she will be responsible for working with the NYT in forging closer digital integration and also for overseeing content that gets the right international perspective on the Web as the NYT Co pursues its global strategy."
NYT bought the rest of IHT from WaPo in 2003.
By Rafat Ali