The IHT is dead! Long live the NYT!

Last November, the New York Times played hardball with the Washington Post and forced the Post to sell its 50% share in the International Herald Tribune. The conventional wisdom at the time was that the Times wanted to create what was essentially an international version of itself (first New York, then America, now the world!). And that's precisely what has been confirmed by the rather sad letter of resignation sent out to all IHT journalists today by Peter Goldmark, its outgoing chairman and CEO.

Goldmark obviously would like this letter to be taken as a courageous stand against the monolithic powers on 43rd Street ("Believe me, I will pay dearly for this, both financially and in other coin"). But in fact it reads more as the death rattle of an anachronistic dinosaur.

Bemoaning the news that the IHT's journalists will now report "exclusively" to New York (what? there won't be any editors in Paris?), Goldmark laments the fact that "I am the last publisher of the IHT as an independent newspaper with its own voice and its own international outlook on the world."

According to Goldmark, the IHT's independence is a valuable commodity: "The world needs more independent voices, not fewer. And at a time when the world is growing to mistrust America, it needs thoughtful voices and independent perspectives that see the world whole and are not managed from America."

But the world never considered the IHT to be an independent voice. It was owned and run by Americans, and filled largely with copy from the two most important American newspapers. It was indisputably an American voice – sometimes with the slightly crusty air common to expats all over the world, but always American.

There is, of course, no shortage of thoughtful voices and independent perspectives that see the world whole and are not managed from America. France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Spain, the UK – even Canada – all of these countries and many more have a vibrant press with an independent and international perspective.

What the world lacked, ironically enough, was a truly American perspective on world events – a generalist counterpart to the Asian and European editions of the Wall Street Journal. CNN International is a very different animal to CNN in the US, and for all that the New York Times sets the agenda in the States, very few people read it in Frankfurt, London, Paris or Tokyo. The IHT, with its stale news and parochial fustiness, was no New York Times.

Even Goldmark admits that the status quo ante was untenable. Underfunded and unloved, the IHT was an artifact of the 60s and 70s, when international travel was still something glamourous and American expats appreciated a means of keeping up with goings-on back home. When the baseball results were not available immediately with the click of a mouse, it served something of a purpose. In the 21st Century, it was little more than a resting home for Times journalists of a certain age, curmudgeonly pipe-and-slippers types who were too fusty for anywhere else.

The Times has taken the obvious and sensible decision to leverage its unrivalled editorial machine in New York and use it to beef up the IHT. With an increase in investment and greater competitive drive, perhaps the Tribune will once again become a newspaper that people read, rather than fondly remember. That won't "leave a big hole", it will fill it.

Posted by Felix at 12:00 EST