IHT to Be Renamed

It’s a change some call inevitable, others call ungainly and many regard wistfully. The New York Times Co. announced last month that sometime next fall the International Herald Tribune will become the International New York Times. The company also said it would increase editorial resources for its international edition. On Twitter, @iht has already become @nytglobal.


Asked for his perspective, OPC member Mort Rosenblum, a former editor of the IHT, said the change makes official what has existed for years.



The Times Co. has fully owned the IHT, which will remain based in Paris, since 2003 when it bought out the 50 percent stake owned by the Washington Post Co. The new moniker promotes the main brand while sacrificing a brand that has had other identities in its 125-year history. The IHT was christened the Paris Herald when it was launched in 1887 as the European edition of the New York Herald. The 1924 sale of the Herald papers to the New York Tribune brought "Herald Tribune" to nameplates on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1935, the Paris Herald Tribune became The New York Herald Tribune, European Edition. After the collapse of the New York Herald Tribune, The Times and the Post rescued the Paris orphan and renamed it the International Herald Tribune.



"In business terms, this new twist probably makes sense," Rosenblum wrote on the Reporting Unlimited page he established on Facebook. Challenges for the IHT, he said, include the high costs for a business operating in Francois Hollande’s France and that "global readers, with other news sources, are reluctant to pay its rising cover price. And worse, people now think news should come free." But, he noted, the paper "is still full of life, stuffed with some of the best global coverage anywhere."


"With a skilled staff filling a tight space, the IHT — sorry, the INYT — could well be the best-edited paper in the world. That costs," Rosenblum said. "The NYT pays $4 million a year just to try to keep its people safe in a scary world. Correspondents start at $93,000 a year, and they deserve it. Theirs is no job for citizen amateurs."