The departure of a second top editor from the International Herald Tribune in recent days has stirred new speculation that it may be the next item on the New York Times chopping block.
Thomas Redburn, who had been the managing editor under IHT Executive Editor Alison Smale, is returning to New York to become the Times’ international economics editor. Redburn will be based on the foreign desk, but will also work with economics teams in Washington, the beleaguered BizDay section and the IHT.
It marks the second upper-echelon editor to be pared from the IHT masthead in recent weeks. In December, Martin Gottlieb, who had been overseeing the Paris-based title from New York as the Times Co.’s global editor, announced his departure to become editor-in-chief of the New Jersey daily The Record, based in Hackensack.
In 2008, Michael Oreskes, who had served as the Paris-based editor-in-chief of the International Herald Tribune, quit the Times after a 27-year career to join the Associated Press as managing editor of US news.
“Everyone associated with the takeover of the IHT is gone other than Arthur,” noted one source.
It was Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger, Jr., who in 2002 strong-armed the Washington Post Co. into dissolving a joint venture under which the two newspaper giants had run the operation for 35 years. At the time, the paper was said to be losing about $5 million a year on revenue of $100 million.
Michael Golden, the influential first cousin of Pinch, who recently supervised the regional newspaper group just sold off to Halifax Media Group, ran the IHT from 2005, when his magazine group was sold, until 2008, when he returned to head the regional newspaper group.
The IHT was one of the few gigs that Golden had where the group he was running was not sold out from under him.
Although speculation has also bubbled up that the Times would love to sell the Boston Globe at some point, that deal is considered a lot more problematic, since the company paid about $1 billion for the paper in 1993 and would have to sell for a fraction of that in today’s depressed newspaper market.
The IHT could be had for a far lower price and as a result could be attractive to a vanity publisher.
At the time of the IHT takeover, the Times Co. reportedly paid under $75 million to dissolve the merger with the Washington Post. Following the sale, the WaPo realized an after-tax gain of only $32 million.
One financial source with knowledge of the Times said he hadn’t heard about anything imminent on the sale front, but added, “The divestiture of everything but the New York Times is the right move. Everything else is a distraction.”
The IHT’s Web site was absorbed into nytimes.com in 2008. The move made sense for the Times, but curtailed any chance that the IHT might have had to grow into a global digital brand.
A new owner could recapture that opportunity, potentially giving the venerable print brand some upside potential.
“There is still a lot of cachet to the IHT name, but can you monetize it?” questioned the financial source.
Some sources said that the Times still relishes the brand’s international footprint and that Pinch would be loath to sell it off.
A Times spokesman declined to comment. “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation,” she said.
Low-key Lang
Laura Lang, the new CEO of Time Inc. who’s celebrating her second week on the job, has been taking a considerably lower-key approach than her predecessor, Jack Griffin.
Griffin, a Meredith Corp. veteran, sent a multipage memo to Time Inc. employees on his first day on the job, Sept. 20, 2010. Borrowing a page from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Griffin embarked on a program to introduce sweeping changes during his first 100 days in office.
The bold initiative appeared to rattle insiders, however, and by February 2011, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes gave Griffin the heave-ho after just five months in the top spot. Bewkes then began a prolonged search for Griffin’s successor that continued until last month, when he lured Lang from her CEO post at Digitas. She didn’t start until Jan. 9, however.
Time Inc. insiders are relieved that they finally have a new leader. But there is whispered concern that an executive who spent her career on the client side, placing ads, may not have the most heightened awareness of the challenges facing journalism.
So far, Lang appears to be treading carefully. Instead of stealing from FDR’s playbook, Lang has borrowed a page from Hillary Rodham Clinton and her famous “listening tour” of New York before her Senate run.
One of the first announcements since Lang took over was the filling of the vacant managing editor’s job at Time.com.
Yesterday Time Editor-In-Chief John Huey and Managing Editor Rick Stengel revealed that the job was going to an insider, Cathy Sharick.
Although Lang is said to be big on digital apps, due to her time running Digitas, that bent hasn’t been reflected on Twitter. Her last tweet was shortly after she took the Time Inc. job and thanked people for all their good wishes.