There Ought To Be A Law Against What The New York Times Has Done To The Herald-Trib

Philip M. Stone April 2, 2009

There’s a fatal flaw in the New York Times’ strategy that makes the print and Web versions of the International Herald Tribune into the global Times, because, put simply, it is the Herald-Tribune that people want to read and not the New York Times.

The IHT, or Herald-Trib as it is often called, has been an on and off read for this writer for more than 30  years. Its glory days were when it was co-owned with the Washington Post  and readers were then treated to a newspaper that had its own very special American character that was perky and vibrant, a joy to read with the best international news coverage that The Times, The Post, and the international news agencies could provide.

The beginning of the end came in 2003 when The Times paid $70 million to force out co-owner Washington Post. The paper has never been as good again as it was under that co-ownership; indeed a valid question today is whether we really need the Trib any more.

The Trib had always carried a lot of US news, and international stories that were of interest to an American audience – that’s the domestic audience the NYT and The Post correspondents were, after all, writing for, but it would be a misnomer to think that the IHT’s readership was primarily American. Sure, plenty of expatriates took it for the  US stock market reports and the US sports coverage, but the readership for many years has been primarily non-American, those who wanted to learn more about America and also those who used the newspaper as a tool to improve their American – yes American and English are two different languages!

Picking up the new paper today and the first thoughts that came to mind were “boring” and “blah”. It looks like, and it feels like a mini-NYT and the International Herald Tribune logo should be banned for impersonating something that it no longer is.

They’ve even achieved making the masthead boring. Look at it –it’s just not the same without the dingbat that they banished last May. Dingbat? – that’s the panorama of images featuring pyramids and camels, an ox pulling a plow, a bridge, an hourglass, an airplane, a bald eagle atop a clock stopped at 6:12 –yes,  that dingbat (the perfect example of where a picture is worth more than 1,000 words so take a look at the dingbat on the left). 

The newspaper says an internal team of NYT and IHT people worked on the IHT’s redesign. A great example of getting what you pay for -- that team should be sent to the woodshed. Take a look at Wednesday’s paper – it features  above the fold a four column Reuters color picture showing the backs of Obama and Michelle climbing stairs. We’re told they are boarding Air Force One on their way to Europe but the picture is cropped in such a way there is no Air Force One, just stairs and the backs of the first couple. That’s the best illustration they had?

And then to the left are two one column stories, each stretching below the fold. Talk about gray – we know the NYT is nicknamed The Gray Lady but we thought it had tried in recent years to liven things up but this is just one mass of gray type, and if that wasn’t bad enough beneath those stories is a black and white picture unrelated to either story. Totally boring gray!

The bottom third of the page is taken up  with one paragraph shorts covering business, world news and views covering four columns – the other two columns on the right taken up with a color Cartier  display ad – actually the most interesting visual on the page!

On pages two and three and combined there are six black and white news photos  and a whole lot of gray verbiage. About as uninviting a read as anything we have seen in a long time. Strikingly missing from the global edition of the New York Times on those pages are all those ads for luxury goods and luxury shops that would be found in the domestic edition.

Page four is gray with one black and white photo  but page five has a four-column color picture  with Rolex taking the entire bottom third width for a color ad. If ever there was a striking example of how color makes such a difference to newsprint today,  pages four and five should be saved for university courses. 

Pages 6– 12 are all black and white  before color reappears on  pages 13 and 14 and then it is only on the back page – page 18 – of the one section paper that one sees color again.

Now maybe the Herald-Trib has printing issues that restricts how many pages can be in color, but whatever, all of that black and white really makes the newspaper pale in comparision to its less expensive European contemporaries --  adding injury to all of this is the high newsstand price. In Switzerland this 18-page masterpiece  cost four francs ($3.50) – close to three times more than the full NYT in New York!

Many analysts have made much that as part of the makeover the IHT has lost its web site which is now consolidated into the Times’ own web site. That’s about the only thing that is of little concern –the IHT’s old web site never seemed to live up to what it should have been, and now being a part of the Times’ own site is probably a welcomed improvement.

But in today’s print Trib the financial  tables are banished to the Internet and Wednesday, in the 1 ½ pages given to sports, there were two long soccer takeouts, plus a feature about Henry Kissinger and his love of soccer, a couple of shorts on tennis and the NFL, a cricket story and a NASCAR takeout, and that’s it.  No results and the like – if you want that coverage then go to the Web.

The bottom half of the second sports page  has Peanuts, Garfield. Wizard of Id, Doonsbury, Calvin and Hobbes and Dilbert all squeezed into the middle two columns. (in black and white). To read the Doonsbury text takes a magnifying glass, and if it’s true that older readers prefer print to the Internet then not too many readers will be enjoying those comics squashed as they are.

The truth is that the Herald-Trib today is a perfect example of why one doesn’t want to buy print any more. With the possible exception of the Views section there wasn’t a story there that couldn’t easily have been read on the Times’s web site.

When this writer was a senior media executive with Reuters he conducted the subscription negotiations with the Herald Tribune. To give an idea of the personality and the brand value of the newspaper during those heady days in the 1990s, on the first round of negotiations the Trib’s then editor, John Vinocur, a former AP executive, started the talks by asking very seriously how much Reuters was willing to pay the IHT for publishing its stories and pictures on what he called, “our front page news billboard distributed around the world.” And he was absolutely serious; he fully  understood the value of that branding. He still ended up paying Reuters more money in a new subscription,  but it was a great opening shot!

What is missing  in the Trib today is that same type of in-your-face bravado, a compelling reason to fork out those four francs daily (yes, a subscription would be less). The fact that it is now the global edition of the New York Times doesn’t do the trick – if anything it detracts.

Stripping away the IHT’s own personality is a pity, and it’s a mistake.