At a time when any local or national news outlet can potentially become an international online brand, and as newsrooms adapt to a 24-hour news cycle, editors can learn from The New York Times' most recent attempt to 'kill' both birds with one stone.
Last week, top execs from The Times and the International Herald Tribuneannounced plans to mergeiht.com and nytimes.com into a co-branded international section, in order to increase both sites' reach and appeal to international advertisers.
In this two-part series, the Weblog spoke to Jim Roberts, Digital Editor at The New York Times, and Martin Gottlieb, who was appointed to the newly created position of Editor, Global Edition.
Through these moves, The Times intends to accomplish at least four ostensible goals:
Part 1: - Build an outpost for its Continuous News Desk in Paris, and eventually Hong Kong. - Integrate operations, streamline some resources by increasing efficiency and avoiding overlap.
Part 2: - Reinforce its international reach and further compete against the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. - Use the strength of NYT's online brand while safeguarding the IHT's popular print brand name. IHT: an outpost for the Times' continuous news
Although the proposed changes are currently undergoing a consultation process with the IHT's works council, as required by French law, the process of integration of both papers began ever since the NYT acquired full control of the IHT in 2003, and has accelerated in past months.
In Feb., NYT executive editor Bill Keller had already announced plans to integrate operations and develop an "organic, global, 24-hour news operation," in order "to create a Continuous News outpost in Paris."
In May, the IHT dropped its 142-year-old logo from its nameplate to replace it with the phrase "The Global Edition of the New York Times."
"That says, we are one, and we are," although both arms are managed separately, said Jim Roberts, digital editor at The Times.
Video: Roberts talks about the 'integration' of both newspapers. Footage was collected during an interview at the 15th World Editors Forum in Sweden.
Thanks to this outpost and the six-hour time difference, the NYT is now able to upload content to its site nearly 24 hours a day (from about 6am to 1am, New York time). The paper eventually hopes to establish a similar outpost at the IHT's Asian headquarters in Hong Kong in the next six months.
The creation of these outposts does not mean that the IHT is becoming a full-blown Paris bureau for The Times. "We have a Paris bureau," said Roberts, "and the newsroom of the IHT still has a print edition and right now they still have a website." Integration, streamlining resources: evolution, no revolution
Since all proposed changes are undergoing a consultation process, editors couldn't give any firm preview of how workflows could be affected.
In the past, there has been "very regular contact between individual desks at the Times and corresponding desks at the IHT," said Martin Gottlieb, newly appointed editor of the Global edition. Many IHT editors come from The Times, regularly do edits on NYT pieces, and this past year IHT-written articles have appeared on nytimes.com with no distinctive byline.
However, there is no formal process of exchange between both newsrooms, and "There have been a couple of occasions when we've had IHT and NYT reporters covering the same thing," said Roberts.
The appointment of Gottlieb as editor of the Global Edition - note, no mention of the IHT in his title - is significant in that respect. In addition to fulfilling the role of editor of the paper, his mission will be to ensure that staff understands both papers are "two parts of one news-gathering operation, that should work in unison as much as possible in delivering the news 24 hours a day seven days a week," said Gottlieb.
A series of new editorial appointments at the IHT will be the symbols of this top-down integration. "There will be people coordinating the work of both staffs to, pretty much, make them as much as possible act as one staff," said Gottlieb.
For example, Alison Smale, who becomes European editor of the global newsroom, will be responsible for "coordinating the work of all NYT and IHT reporters in the region from the IHT newsroom in Paris," said the memo. To oversee the process, The Times also named Alan Flippen "Editor, Newsroom Organization."
It seems too early to say whether the planned reforms will lead to radical changes in workflows or content. Evolution, not revolution, said Roberts.
Currently, an IHT reporter based in Hong Kong might build upon a Times' story about the rise of airline fuel prices by interviewing Asian carriers, whose input might not have been as relevant to the core readership of the Times in the US. Likewise, an IHT story published in the Times might be fine-tuned to be more pertinent to the American audience (see the example of Der Spiegel in Part 2, looking at different newspaper approaches towards international editions).
Future workflows will likely build upon these current processes, rather than start from scratch. "It's continuing synergies that are taking place and maximizing them and regularizing them," said Gottlieb.
The planned changes can also be seen as an attempt to streamline resources - terminology often equivocated with cost cuts and layoffs. But according to Gottlieb, there are no planned newsroom layoffs at this point (this is subject to change during the next six months). It is possible that an online merger of iht.com and nytimes.com could lead to redundancies for some technical Web production positions.
Editors couldn't comment on any upcoming changes concerning the IHT's planned print redesign.
Stay tuned for Part 2, which will examine The Times' international branding strategy, and how newspapers can grow a previously inaccessible international readership.
Source: New York Times - Media Bistro - Jim Roberts, Digital Editor The New York Times - Martin Gottlieb, Editor, Global Edition
The success of the award-winning Teeside Evening Gazette website has been boosted by its hyper-local microsites, which have in turn enabled investments into the print paper and staff.
