Old Gray Lady goes global

Last night there was a small, but significant change on the internets. The New York Times launched a "Global Edition" and quietly shifted the look of the International Herald Tribune (Wiki) site to essentially match this new edition (note the slight difference in the mastheads).

Few Times readers may have noticed this shift. I'll admit that I did see the link to the new addition, but it was not until A Mistake pointed out the Trib tie-in that I realized what the Times is really up to: they are taking the NY Times brand global and are (I think) retiring the Tribune.

Think about it this way: the Tribune had been owned by the Times and the Washington Post for many years. Last year the Times completed a buy-out of the Post's stake in the overseas paper and now owns it outright. The Trib has essentially been a paper in name only for a long time. The pages were full of Times and Post reprints with a little extra global content and "exotic" sports (great cricket coverage). But the locals don't buy it, the tourists and ex-pats do. They know the name, and the content is familar (and I believe credited to the sorce paper).

So your the Times and now you own the international paper outright. And you are cutting back on costs including overses reporting. What do you do with the this paper that most people know is yours anyway? You retire it.

In my mind this makes a lot of sense:

• The Times can mimic the sucessful models of Time and Newsweek with thier international editions and have an overseas version of thier paper that tourist will immediatly recognize on the newsstands
• They can unify two websites and mimic funcationality and content management of both
• They can use the "Global" site as an incubator for new ideas -- those that work get pushed to the "core" website, those that don't get shelved
• This opens up the opportunity for fully global ad buys across both sites and papers (and less competition for ad dollars)
  
• The Times gets to elevate their brand, further solidifying their position as the "national" paper of the U.S. (sorry The USA Today) while taking out an aging, less popular brand (sorry Tribune, you had a good run)
• Shared content allows for "special reports" from one publication to another with minimal reader confusion
• Consolidated news rooms save money

Of course I could be wrong, there could be a good reason to keep the Tribune around in print (maybe it sells better due to anti-American sentiments or maybe it makes no real cost difference). But I'll bet that the Times is trying this experiment online and if they get little to no push back they will quickly make this change offline as well.

Then again, they are the Times so we know they don't always make the best business decisions.

Additional coverage from Reuters and Editor & Publisher.