A new online Global Edition at global.nytimes.com merges the IHT with the NYT. Instead of a separate page, IHT.com users are automatically redirected to global.nytimes.com.

The newspaper, and the magazine New York, are the two surviving elements of the New York Herald-Tribune. Read our post Lessons from Newspapers from the Surviving Bits of the NY Herald Tribune.

The newspaper makes use of the Cheltenham font.

Press statements:

• Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, publisher of the IHT, said: “Together with The Times, we are creating a powerhouse for high quality global news – it is thanks to closer integration with New York that has made the dynamic new Global Edition online a round-the-clock reality, and it is thanks to this that we have such a clear and sparkling new design for our newspaper.
• Martin Gottlieb, editor, global edition said ”Redesigning the newspaper and reconfiguring our global online presence at the same time created significant opportunities for us journalistically: Working together with The New York Times, we have been able to look at the overall balance and direction of our coverage afresh. By consolidating Web operations and improving design processes, we are freeing up editorial energies to focus on delivering the accurate reporting, thought-provoking writing and sharp analysis that our international readers need now more than ever.”

Our verdict? Handsome, but not very interesting.

These brand names have value in a web-centric world.

With that in mind, let’s look at one newspaper, the New York Herald-Tribune. When the newspaper died in the 1960s, what survived was the International Herald-Tribune and the supplement, the New York magazine. The latter was rescued by Clay Felker in 1964 and turned into a very profitable magazine brand. Each flourished; perhaps one could argue that if the Herald-Tribune company had sold off or shut down the newspaper and kept New York and the IHT, it would still be in business. (We wonder how long New York Times Co. is going to keep the IHT brand? We believe that they should NOT change it. What they are doing now is perfect, leveraging the content of the Times, but still keeping the IHT identity. It’s a totally different paper. NYT did shut down the IHT website.)

I noticed on the website Newspapertiger.com that Journal Register had closed down a number of flags. (Read a great Alan “Newsosaur” Mutter analysis here.) While not having a familiarity with the exact market, in general any local newspaper that has been around for over four decades has much regional clout, and long relationships with local advertisers, even if they have been ruined by over-leveraged companies. In addition, they have back issues that sometimes go back 100 years. This is all legit “goodwill” that needs to be sold for cheap, not ditched. Dirks, Van Essen & Murry, a longtime broker, handled the sales; I am sure they would love to talk to anyone with cash.

Now, I am not saying these papers have LOTS of value. They have small value. What I am saying is that there is some value there, and with the investment of tiny amounts of money, and large amounts of expertise and time, many of these properties do not have to disappear. Perhaps the company could offload them for nominal amounts for a five-year balloon payment of some reasonable sum. That way there might be some long-term hope for the local flags.

It looks like some newspapers are being saved. For instance, in the Media Post story by Erik Sass, he writes that says that The East Hartford Gazette was closed, but its longtime editor Bill Doak has reincarnated it as “The Gazette,” serving as publisher, chief writer, and deliveryman. This type of setup has a long history in newspapering.

According to the Media Post story, the daily newspapers, The Herald of New Britain and the Bristol Press, were “saved from closure at the last minute when they were sold to Mike Schroeder, a former Newsday executive who also bought three weeklies: the Wethersfield Post, the Newington Town Crier, and the Rocky Hill Post.”

God bless Schroeder.

Interesting that Journal Register could not find buyers for the Harlem Valley weeklies. Some of these readership areas are very affluent and that the company was unable to find a buyer speaks not only to the crazy market, but to the company’s utter lack of imagination in figuring out how to run these small papers. The reality is that most of these papers could have run themselves if given independence from the parent company, but realistically, they sucked so much life and cash out of all these small papers for so long that it is no wonder they could not survive. I wonder if the company had so much to worry about that it just couldn’t do it all in time.

A few mentioned in the story:

Taconic Press (Journal Register subsidiary)

• Millbrook Round Table
• The Voice Ledger of Pleasant Valley
• The Gazette-Advertiser of Rhinebeck
• The Pawling News Chronicle
• The Harlem Valley Times
• The Hyde Park Townsman
• The Register Herald of Pine Bluffs
• The Putnam County Courier

Connecticut (apparently) closed:

• Bloomfield Journal and is said to be preparing to close the Shoreline Times
• Pictorial Gazette
• Branford Review
• Clinton Recorder and The Advertiser, of East Haven.

Interested in saving the actual newspaper? Read our post 20 Ways to Save the Daily. You might not agree with them all, but I think you will find that there are some suggestions that make you think. You might also read my story on saving newspaper flags; there I mention that over a decade ago I revived a newspaper name in Richmond, The Richmond State. We lasted for two years; perhaps at age 28 I wasn’t ready to run a newspaper. But in that scenario, I learned that using an old flag made a start-up much easier. I can look back on the project and see many mistakes that are easy to see in hindsight; one thing that was NOT a mistake as taking an old legacy newspaper flag and reviving it. Instantly, I found a spot in local libraries, and with the community.

I would love to hear from some folks in NY and Connecticut about these individual flags. While many cannot be rescued immediately, the folks at Journal Register should listen to suggestions on how to keep these newspapers alive in some form, so that these great towns can still have a voice. When these newspapers disappear, it is not like a filling station closing up. The soul of a community often leaves with the weekly newspaper.

SEATTLE – So, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is up for sale, and if no one buys it, the paper will turn into an Internet-only newspaper, or so says Hearst.

Hearst has owned the paper since 1921, and made a lot of money off of it for years, though they say that recently, it hasn’t. The paper has a circulation of 114,000 with losses for years. According to press reports, it lost around 14 million dollars in 2008 and more last year.

“Our journalists continue to do a spectacular job of serving the people of Seattle, which has been our great privilege for the past 88 years,” said Steven Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, in an AFP story.

We have an idea. If it comes to this, Steven Swarts, why not make it a weekend-only newspaper? So the newspaper becomes the Sunday Seattle Post-Intelligencer. (Above, the Saturday edition; why not the Weekend Seattle Post-Intelligencer or the Saturday Seattle Post-Intelligencer.)

Yes, vast staff would have to be laid off, but the town could still reasonably keep two printed editions of the newspaper.  Certainly there might be issues with the joint operating agreement and the weird joint Sunday edition, but they can be end-rounded, I am sure. City officials and the community want to see something survive.

The reason to do this is to help the future of the brand online. Otherwise, it will be hard for the Internet version to survive. The brand needs something print connected to it. If the P-I disappears, that ad revenue will not necessarily go to the Times. Even one-newspaper-town dailies are struggling.

This move has a precedent:

1. A weekend paper has the greatest revenue of all.
2. The paper can have a life as an ad distribution vehicle, that is separate from the news value of the paper.
3. The print edition once a week will help to promote the Internet site.
4. British newspapers have a tradition of separate staffs of the daily newspaper. Some even have different graphic identities. London Weekend Television was a separate network just broadcasting on the weekend. Weird, but it works.
5. The P-I then becomes a bit like an alternative weekly. This can provide reasonable competition to the daily, if the reporters are scrappy enough.
6. After the daily print operation is shut, then there is a reasonable possibility that the paper could consider a launch of a free daily edition, or some other small-scale niche papers.

Imagine your city without a daily paper. Newspaper publishers, editors, managers and owners are worrying, not only about having to lay off staff, but who will cover the community in a meaningful way.

In Economics 101, it’s the classic “free rider” problem. Who will attend planning meetings and the statehouse? Who will investigate police and crime? Will news only get covered when there is an outburst, and it somehow gets posted by some unwashed blogger? Let’s call it the era of “Don’t Taze Me Bro” journalism.

But it does not have to be that way. There is a role for your the local paper, because in some cases, these local franchises have been the leading local brands in their markets.

That being said, there is a problem for newspapers. The incredible 30 percent margins, unbelievable power and unassailable position of your regional paper in past years have all made it hard for you to know what to do, and unable to act like the underdog. So far, your paper has redesigned pages, shortened articles, cut staff, eliminated bureaus, reduced paper size and redesigned your website now about, oh, 10 times. What the industry has done is put the newspaper in a severely reduced competitive position at a time when you need your scale and power more than ever.

Newspapers are the point where radio was after the advent of television. For years after television arrived, radio networks ran Hoover-era schedules of soap operas, dramas and westerns, even as television encroached on its audience. Radio’s audience declined. But one day, clever station managers realized that if radio was to survive, new leadership would have to remake it completely. Somewhere in the 1950s, the proper mix of news, d.j.s, traffic, weather, music and talk radio was invented, and the great radio stations survived. Rock music arrived. FM took off. And radio’s KDKA, WABC, KYW and the like thrived again.

The Greatest Regional Brands

Like the great radio stations, newspapers are important regional brands that need not go the way of the regional department store. The regional newspaper brand names mean something to the community. They evoke a region like no other. Use that legacy.

The Hartford-Courant. The Virginian-Pilot. The Richmond Times-Dispatch. The Los Angeles Times. Louisville Courier-Journal. Newark Star-Ledger. The Baltimore Sun. The Miami Herald. The New York Post.

These franchises have legs, and the public trusts them, even though they curse the editorials. Use that legacy and history. People like the idea of reading a newspaper. Do not let your brand go the way of the regional department store. Unless you act, The New York Times will do to regional daily papers what Macy’s did to Burdine’s, Marshall Field and the rest.

Pronounced Dead Many Times

The newspaper has been pronounced dead many times, as have other media. A timeline:

• 1910: Recorded music will kill the orchestra.
• 1930: Radio will kill the newspaper, and the music industry.
• 1950: Television will kill the newspaper, and movies.
• 1982: Cable will kill the newspaper and the network news.
• 1995: The Internet will kill the newspaper and the music industry.
• 2002: The Internet will save the newspaper and kill the movie industry.
• 2009: Kindle kills the newspaper, and bloggers instead scoop the greatest story of all time, the Second Coming!

Let’s get serious. Newspapers can reinvent their century old brands.

What to do?

First, believe that there are solutions. The important point is not to give the pessimism an inch. Instead, realize that there is a changed environment, and you need to establish a process for coming up with, and implementing, ideas. New ideas. And you have to completely commit to killing sacred cows. Your staff might be smaller, and have to work differently. Radio killed off Dark Shadows. CBS took the risk of moving Edward R. Murrow from radio to television.

BrandlandUSA.com put together a FREE 10-page PDF report called 20 Ways to Re-Invent the Local Paper. A link is below and here 20 Ways to Save Your Newspaper. The sheet includes the following ideas, each with descriptions.

To start, we suggest that newspapers:

1. Change the percent of R.O.P. advertising vs. insert advertising
2. Greatly upgrade the status of carriers
3. Selectively use bureaus for promotional purposes
4. Make the newspaper unique, even at higher cost
5. Drop online partners that don’t help you
6. Force the web staff and print staff to compete
7. Cut back on zoned editions
8. Stress the local brand, not wire copy
9. Ditch ombudsmen
10. Move sports reporters to city desk
11. Go on old-style crusades
12. Emphasize news side balance
13. Re-hire retired staffers part-time
14. Make the design stodgy
15. Decrease photo size
16. Reorganize classifieds
17. Make weddings and obits free
18. Change minority recruiting practices
19. Don’t rest on old ad rates
20. Bring humor back into the paper

Want to find out more? Download a free PDF copy of the document here at BrandlandUSA’s 20 Ways to Save Your Newspaper.

A group of investors will revive the Weekly World News title, according to the Palm Beach Post.

The company American Media Operations Inc. sold the title of the late newspaper to the company Bat Boy LLC, a company named after the half-man, half-bat creature that first appeared on the cover of the paper in 1992.

The company has revived the tabloid newspaper on the website, www.weeklyworldnews.com. It has great stories, including the shocker, that Sarah Palin has bagged a bigfoot, all while holding her baby. On the website, you can also register on the site in a place called Area 51.