New York Times brings IHT into the fold
It’s no secret that the International Herald Tribune is part of The New York Times Co, so why not flaunt it? Visitors to nytimes.com and iht.com saw evidence of this thinking Sunday (or Monday, depending on where you are).
When you visit the IHT website, you now see a Web link on your Internet browser that says this: http://global.nytimes.com/?iht. The flag at the top of the page now reads: “International Herald Tribune: The Global edition of The New York Times.” The layout of the website also has been adjusted to resemble that of nytimes.com’s homepage. If you visit nytimes.com, a banner across the top of the page invites you to “try the new global edition,” which, of course, is what iht.com used to be. If you’re a regular Reuters reader, you can’t say you’re too surprised, as we told you last June that this was coming.
We’re curious about whether bringing the IHT closer into the fold allows the Times to cut its costs in any significant way, and will update this blog entry once we get some clarity on that. The Times is dealing with falling advertising revenue and also has had to take other steps such as selling its interest in its headquarters building and borrowing money at a high interest rate from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to help pay off debt. It also cut 100 jobs in its business operations, it said on Friday, and said it is cutting staff pay by 5 percent (and in the case of union workers in its newsroom, is asking them to agree to that pay cut to avoid news staff layoffs).
Here, meanwhile, is a quote from Global Edition Editor Martin Gottlieb that was included in the press release. Somewhere in here is a “cost saving”:
Working together with The New York Times, we have been able to look at the overall balance and direction of our coverage afresh. By consolidating Web operations and improving design processes, we are freeing up editorial energies to focus on delivering the accurate reporting, thought-provoking writing and sharp analysis that our international readers need now more than ever.
There also is an advertising case to be made here, which comes courtesy of a quote from Jean Christophe Demarta, international advertising director for The New York Times Media Group:
The new online Global Edition and the new-look newspaper have generated a wealth of new opportunities for advertisers looking to reach our influential, international audience.
Thomson Reuters CEO: No paper, please
Thomson Reuters Corp, the company that employs me and runs this blog, posted fourth-quarter financial results on Tuesday. My colleague and I wrote them up for the wire, and you can see them here. Meanwhile, here’s something that didn’t make it in to the story that we wanted to share.
During a conference call with reporters, I asked Chief Executive Tom Glocer, who ran Reuters before Thomson Corp bought it, what the company plans to do regarding investing in news. I also asked if the company could ever be in the market for another print newspaper. Remember that Thomson Reuters likes to tout the fact that Thomson Corp long ago got out of the newspaper business, thinking there was more of a future in electronic information that you make people pay a lot of money for.
On news spending:
We’ve continued to invest in news and we think 2009 is a very good year in investment for us both in terms of having brought in some of the journalists who have joined from Thomson Financial, but also investments we’re making in new editorial systems, in the video, multimedia presentation of news. So I think one of the good things about the strength of our financial performance is that we can continue to invest when a lot of pure media companies aren’t.
On getting “back” into the newspaper business (I asked whether the Financial Times or The New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune would be good fits, specifically. But why not The New York Times? Everyone with more than a few pennies to rub together is a candidate to buy it these days.)
[Thomson was] so early in getting out of newspapers that now to go back in when our business model is so focused on professionals and so overwhemingly electronic doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. … If there were a fantastic information product that was 95 percent electronic and 5 percent a print output device, we would do it — maybe — if it otherwise made sense. I’m not convinced that we know how to run a newspaper any better than the ones running them today.
If newspapers keep cutting their print editions, it might not be long before the “95-5″ ratio is normal in big U.S. cities.
I guess print newspapers touch a lot of people, however the next boom which is picking up is information through mobile devices. It helps one to access any amount of news/information on the go. May be TR should be looking at investing in improving the content delivery through mobile devices.
Thanks for sharing this post.